When it comes to minimum wage and paid sick leave mandatory benefits in California, most attention is given to the state laws on these topics. Perhaps for many employers the more important, but less reported, story is the trend of city minimum wage and paid sick leave ordinances with requirements on employers that exceed the state law. Recently, both Los Angeles and San Diego passed laws that are significant for employers who have employees performing work in those cities.
This week, voters in the City of San Diego approved an ordinance (Ordinance No. O-20390) that immediately raises the minimum wage to $10.50 and will raise the City’s minimum wage again in 2017 to $11.50 per hour. Thereafter, increases will take place based on the Consumer Price Index. The ordinance also mandates paid sick leave for employees who perform as little as two hours of work or more per year in the City of San Diego. The full text of the ordinance as proposed to voters in Proposition I can be found here: https://www.sdvote.com/content/dam/rov/en/proptext/0607_Prop_I.pdf.
Within the last two weeks, in Los Angeles, the City Counsel adopted an ordinance that mandates employers to provide up to six days of paid sick leave for employees who work for the same employer 30 days or more within a year of employment. The law also takes the unusual step of expressly creating personal and individual liability for an “employer” which is defined to include “any person . . . corporate officer or executive . . . who exercises control over the wages, hours or working conditions of any employee.” The full text of the ordinance can be found here: https://clkrep.lacity.org/onlinedocs/2014/14-1371_ORD_184320_6-2-16.pdf.
Many other cities have local ordinances that exceed state law for minimum wage and/or paid leave such as: San Francisco, San Jose, Long Breach, Sacramento, and Pasadena just to name a few. It is critical that California employers be mindful of the wage and paid leave local ordinances in the cities in which the company’s employees perform work.
