SAN DIEGO — Front-line workers are celebrating after state lawmakers passed a bill Monday requiring businesses to provide paid time off for workers with COVID.
Similar to legislation that expired last fall, this new policy would mandate employers to offer up to two additional weeks off, and includes workers who need to care for a family member with COVID.
This legislation now heads to Governor Gavin Newsom, who is expected to sign it into law.
"It is a huge victory that we've been anticipating for a very long time," said Nikki Avey, a front-line nurse in San Diego, who is also a member of United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals, which has fought hard for supplemental COVID paid sick leave.
"Front-line workers have been struggling. We do work in these areas that are high-risk. We are around it every day," Avey told CBS 8.
"A lot of them have been wiping out their sick leave, utilizing it all up because either they got sick or a family member got sick, so it's nice to know that they now have that benefit again."
The California Legislature approved the bill on Monday. It is similar to the COVID sick pay policy that expired in September of last year.
"If there is one lesson we learned from last year's action on supplemental sick leave, is that we did it, it worked and we can do it again," said Democratic Assembly Member Wendy Carrillo (District 51).
"They put their lives, their livelihoods at risk, so I think the COVID sick leave is the least we can do," added Democratic Assembly Member Phil Ting (District 19), who also chairs the Assembly's budget committee.
This supplemental sick pay applies to businesses with 26 or more workers, and is retroactive to January 1 of this year. It provides up to two additional weeks of paid time off if an employee is sick with COVID, or if they have to take care of a family member who contracts the disease.
That is a relief for Nikki Avey, who is also the mother of four children.
"If your child is sick, you can actually be home with them, so it is nice to know that we have that to use," she said.
Part-time workers would be eligible for sick leave equal to the number of hours they typically work in a week.
Critics of this legislation, though, like Republican Assembly Member Vince Fong (District 34), said that its passage will have "unintended consequences."
"Requiring small businesses and nonprofits to pay up to two weeks of sick pay leave on top of existing pay leave is a financial burden that can bankrupt a local store, a local restaurant or a nonprofit that is holding on by the skin of their teeth," Fong said.
Businesses did receive some relief on Monday: a tax hike that was implemented at the start of the pandemic was supposed to expire next year. With Monday's vote by the Legislature though, that tax hike will expire one year early, saving businesses roughly $5.5 billion.
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