by Gail Cohen, Esq. - Assistant General Counsel Employment and Litigation
November 22, 2019
California employers perennially face challenges keeping up with the Golden State’s legislative developments, and the 2019 legislative session was certainly no exception! At Matrix Absence Management we 
monitor pending and enacted legislation to assist our clients in preparing for those developments, particularly in the leave of absence, disability claim, and ADA/state disability law arenas.
Here is a summary of California’s 2019 enacted legislation relevant to our industry:
CA PFL extended, leave reason added. Effective July 1, 2020, Senate Bill 83 amended CA Paid Family Leave (“PFL”) to provide for eight weeks (up from six weeks) of paid benefits to eligible employees. The leave is available to care for a seriously ill family member (broadly defined to include child, spouse, parent, grandparent, grandchild, sibling, or domestic partner), or to bond with a minor child within one year of its birth or placement for foster care or adoption.
CA Senate Bill 83 also adds a new qualifying reason to the PFL program: Effective January 1, 2021, California employees will be able to receive wage replacement benefits during leave taken to participate in a qualifying exigency related to the covered active duty or call to covered active duty of the individual’s spouse, domestic partner, child, or parent in the Armed Forces of the United States.
Currently, these leaves are not job protected under the paid family leave program. Rights to reinstatement may come from other unpaid leave laws, such as the California Family Rights Act and the federal Family and Medical Leave Act.
More changes may be on the way. The bill includes a requirement for study and development of a proposal for bonding leave up to 6 months per parent, and an increase in the wage replacement rates from the current 60-70%.
CFRA amendment to address flight crews. Clients in the airline industry are used to the FMLA regulations specific to flight crews, which historically have not applied under the California Family Rights Act (“CFRA”). Assembly Bill 1748, signed by Governor Newsom on October 10, 2019, and effective January 1, 2020, amends CFRA to address airline flight deck or cabin crew employees. The bill closely follows the FMLA rules regarding leave eligibility for flight crews. It provides that the Department of Fair Employment and Housing may promulgate regulation(s) to assist employers with calculating the hours worked requirement of this CFRA amendment. As of this writing, no such regulations prescribing the method for employers to do so have been made publicly available.
CA organ donation. Current California law requires private employers to give employees up to 30 business days of paid leave for organ donation and up to 5 business days of paid leave for bone marrow donation in a one-year period. Effective January 1, 2020, an amendment to the CA donor law (Assembly Bill 1223) will require private employers with 15 or more employees to give eligible employees an additional 30 business days of unpaid leave in a one-year period (measured from the date the employee’s leave begins over the continuing 12 months) for the purpose of donating an organ to another person. You can find more details about the new CA law in our prior blog post here.
Matrix can help!
Matrix will be ready to administer these California changes as they go into effect. At Matrix we monitor state and federal legislative developments daily and report on any new or advancing leave- and accommodation-related laws to keep our clients and business partners up to date. If you ever have questions about leave and accommodation laws – current or just introduced! – please contact your account manager or send an email to [email protected].