BILL ANALYSIS �
Senate Appropriations Committee Fiscal Summary
Senator Kevin de Le�n, Chair
AB 1562 (Gomez) - Employment: Leave
Amended: June 23, 2014 Policy Vote: L&IR 4-1
Urgency: No Mandate: No
Hearing Date: June 30, 2014
Consultant: Robert Ingenito
This bill meets the criteria for referral to the Suspense File.
Bill Summary: AB 1562 would expand eligibility for unpaid family
and medical leave under the California Family Rights Act (CFRA)
to public or private school employees.
Fiscal Impact:
The Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH)
indicates that it would require $500,000 (General Fund)
annually to implement the provisions of the bill.
The bill also could result in a cost pressure related to
Proposition 98 education spending. The magnitude is
unknown, but could potentially be up to the tens of
millions of dollars annually (General Fund, see Staff
Comments).
Background: The CFRA is California's counterpart to the federal
Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). Both acts provide for up
to 12 weeks of unpaid family and medical leave for public and
private employees.
The CFRA has two main eligibility criteria: (1) an employee must
have worked for the employer for more than 12 months, and (2)
the employee must have worked more than 1,250 hours for the
employer during the prior 12-month period. The 1,250-hour
threshold under the CFRA generally represents 60 percent of
full-time for an employee working 40 hours per week over 12
months.
Consequently, full-time employees routinely satisfy the hours
requirement; a full-time employee working 40 hours per week will
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work 2,080 hours in a 12-month period. The 1,250 hour threshold
under CFRA generally represents 60 percent of a full-time
schedule. Therefore, part-time workers may be eligible for
leave under the CFRA as long as they generally work about 60
percent of a full-time schedule. A part-time employee would
have to work about 24 hours per week in order to reach the hours
needed for CRFA eligibility. The length of the school year makes
it more difficult for school employees to meet the specific
1,250 hour requirement of CFRA. This bill would allow a school
employee to meet the hours requirement in current law or 60
percent of a full-time schedule.
Proposed Law: This bill would amend current law pertaining to
unpaid family and medical leave with respect to public or
private school employees, as specified. Specifically, this
bill would do the following:
Provides that for eligibility purposes, during the
previous 12-month period, a public or private school
employee must have served at least 60 percent of a the
hours of service that an employee who is employed full time
is required to perform in a school year, in addition to
other existing requirements.
Provides that an existing provision of law that allows
an employer to refuse to reinstate an employee returning
from leave under certain circumstances does not apply to
public or private school employees.
Related Legislation: SB 193 (Marks), Chapter 580, Statutes of
1993. Created the California Family Rights Act (CFRA), also
known as the Moore-Brown-Roberti Family Rights Act.
Staff Comments: DFEH anticipates that this bill would result in
an increase in workload, related to CFRA complaint filings. The
department estimates that a roughly 20 percent in increase in
complaints would require $500,000 and six additional positions.
Any estimate of the bill's impact on Proposition 98 cost
pressures is subject to considerable uncertainty. As noted
previously, leave under AB 1562 would be unpaid; however, in
some instances, employees could swap unpaid leave for paid leave
if they have accumulated sufficient hours. To the extent that
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this occurs, costs to employers would increase, as they would
have the same costs for their full-time employees taking leave,
but would incur additional costs to pay for substitutes, (though
their labor costs are generally lower than the full-time
employees taking leave). The result could be a Proposition 98
cost pressure. The amount of the cost pressure is unknown. If a
small fraction of the State's estimated 284,000 teachers used
paid leave credits to take 12 weeks of CRFA, the cost pressure
would be in the tens of millions of dollars.