New York Mandates Paid Time Off for COVID-19 Vaccination; New Federal COVID-19 Relief Law May Help
Posted by [email protected] on Mar. 17, 2021 / Subscribe 0
New York Mandates Paid Time Off for COVID-19 Vaccination; New Federal COVID-19 Relief Law May Help
By Tracey I. Levy
Granting employees special paid time off as an incentive to get the COVID-19 vaccine is no longer a matter of being nice or acting in an employer’s self-interests. Effective as of March 12, 2021, all employers in New York State are required to grant employees up to four hours of paid leave (separate from all existing paid time off benefits) for purposes of receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. This is in addition to the state’s mandates for employers to provide up to three two-week intervals of COVID-19 sick leave, at least a portion of which must be paid by all but the smallest employers, as we have discussed in our prior blog article.
Employers seeking to fund this new paid leave mandate may want to consult with their tax advisors on their eligibility for payroll tax credits under the new American Rescue Plan Act (“ARPA”) (President Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief law). Among the many financial incentives in the law are provisions that expand the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (“FFCRA”) in several key ways. First, ARPA dovetails nicely with the new New York State vaccine leave mandate in that it permits FFCRA paid sick leave to be claimed when an employee needs time off to get a vaccine. Second, ARPA extends the period in which an employee can qualify for FFCRA leave through September 30, 2021, and it resets the clock, as of April 1, 2021, on the 10-day cap on eligible COVID-related sick leave. Therefore, even employees who already used FFCRA leave in 2020 or early 2021 can take a fresh set of up to 10 days of leave for an FFCRA- qualifying reason subsequent to April 1, 2021.
Looking beyond vaccination leave, ARPA further expands the list of FFCRA-qualifying leaves to include time off to recover from illness or injury related to the vaccine. This is not a required ground for paid leave under New York State law, but it provides a financial benefit to employers to grant employees such recovery time outside of the employees’ regular paid leave bank.
Third, ARPA extends FFCRA leave to cover employees who are awaiting the results of a COVID-19 test or diagnosis because the employer requested that the employee be tested or because the employee was exposed to someone who had tested positive for COVID-19. As we discussed in our last blog posting, guidance issued by the New York State Department of Labor earlier this year stated that employers were required to continue to pay an employee’s regular salary if the employee was not (yet) under a quarantine or isolation order, but the employer was mandating the employee remain out of work due to actual or potential exposure to COVID-19. Employers faced with this situation may now be able to tap the FFCRA paid sick leave credits to receive at least partial reimbursement for providing that paid time off.
Finally, ARPA expands the Emergency FMLA leave component of FFCRA, which comprised two weeks of unpaid, and 10 weeks of paid, leave at two-thirds of the employee’s salary, up to $200 per day. While previously this leave was solely available to care for a child whose school or childcare center was closed for COVID-related reasons, up to the full 12 weeks of leave can now be offered to employees for any reason that qualifies for FFCRA paid sick leave. ARPA also increases the paid component so that an employee can receive partial salary for all 12 weeks of the leave period. Thus, employers that are facing employees with repeat quarantines may be able to offset at least a portion of the salary cost for those additional quarantine periods by claiming the FFCRA credit.
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