Santa Monica Paid Sick Leave Effective January 1, 2017

Effective January 1, 2017, Santa Monica has begun the roll-out of the city’s new Paid Sick Leave law.  The law will be implemented in a two stage approach as is shown below.

• Employers with 26 or more employees:
  • January 1, 2017 – employees will accrue at a rate of 40 hours
  • July 1, 2018 – employees will accrue at a rate of 72 hours
• Employers with 25 or less employees:
  • January 1, 2017 – employees will accrue at a rate of 32 hours
  • January 1, 2018 – employees will accrue at a rate of 40 hours

Who is Eligible?

All employees working within the city limits of Santa Monica who work at least two hours per week and who qualify as being eligible for minimum wage are eligible for Paid Sick Leave.

What Employers and Employees Need to Know?

 Accrual: Employees begin to accrue paid sick leave on their first day of work and can begin to use hours after 90 days of employment or as stipulated in the employer’s paid sick leave policy.  For every 30 hours that an employee works, they will accrue 1 hour of Paid Sick Leave.  Employers may provide the entire sick leave accrual at the beginning of the year or may accrue it throughout the year.

Carry Over and Pay Outs:  By city law, employees can carry over hours from year-to-year at the accrual rate specified above.  Unused Paid Sick Leave is not required to be paid out.

The new Santa Monica Paid Sick Leave law joins the city’s other posting requirements (Minimum Wage, Service Charge Law and Hotel Worker Living Wage) and is available in the Santa Monica all-in-one Complete Poster package.  (It is worth noting that the Santa Monica Minimum Wage will increase on July 1, 2017 and the rate is included on the current combination poster.)   The Labor Law Center offers a worry-free service to our customers through our Poster Service Plan with automatic replacements.  What this means is that we monitor the state and federal postings and automatically send you updates when they are released.  It is that simple!

We also offer our clients our newly updated Education Center.  If you are new to labor law compliance or just wanting to keep up with the latest news and changes as they come out, this is the place to bookmark and visit regularly.