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San Antonio, TX Paid Sick Leave Delayed

July 31, 2019

San Antonio’s paid sick & safe leave ordinance will take effect on August 1, 2019, excluding employers with five or fewer employees in the preceding 12 months.
Alert

Update: Due to a recent court challenge to the San Antonio Paid Sick Leave Ordinance, it has now been delayed until December 1, 2019.  

Paylocity will update the systems to reflect this change. There is no current action that needs to be taken by clients. 

San Antonio City Council adopted a paid sick and safe leave ordinance. San Antonio’s ordinance is scheduled to generally take effect on August 1, 2019, although for employers with five or fewer employees in the preceding 12 months, compliance obligations are delayed until August 1, 2021. Depending on the outcome of the current pending legal and state legislative challenges against these types of ordinances, the San Antonio ordinance may never go into effect.

Coverage

The ordinance applies to all private employers. However, a greater leave amount must be provided by employers with more than 15 employees. Employees are eligible for paid sick leave if they perform at least 80 hours of work for pay within the cities geographic boundaries are covered, including those performing work through the services of a temporary agency. The ordinance does not cover independent contractors or unpaid interns. Different to other similar paid sick leave laws, the ordinance applies to employees covered by a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) and only one provision in the law, accrual caps, may be partially waived via a CBA.

Sick Leave Accrual and Entitlement

Employees must accrue at least one hour for every 30 hours worked within the geographic boundaries of San Antonio. Leave accrues in whole-hour units, not proportionally. Accrual caps depend on the size of the employer. For those employers with 16 or more employees, the accrual cap is 64 hours within a 12-month period.  For those employers with 15 or fewer employees, the accrual cap is 48 hours within a 12-month period. Accrued, unused paid sick leave can be carried over into a new benefit year so the accrual cap may be twice the applicable annual cap.

Employers are allowed to frontload 64 or 48 hours at the beginning of a 12-month period and carryover need not apply. Employers may also enforce a probationary period for use of leave to 60 days only if there is a contact of at least one year of employment.

Approved Uses

Employees can use leave for themselves or to care for or assist a family member, which includes an employee’s child, parent, or spouse, or any other individual related by blood or whose close association with the employee is the equivalent of a family relationship.

Paid Sick Leave can be used for absences due to an employee or family member’s illness, injury, or health condition, including preventive care. If an employee or family member is a victim of stalking, domestic abuse, or sexual assault, leave can also be used for medical reasons, to relocate, to obtain services from a victim services organization, and to participate in legal proceedings.

Notice

The ordinance requires that employers provide monthly electronic or written statements to employees showing the amount of available leave. If an employer provides an employee handbook, included in the handbook must be a notice identifying the employees’ rights and remedies under the ordinance. Also, employers must conspicuously display any poster created by the city describing the law’s requirements in English and any other languages the city may eventually require. The law requires employers to maintain records concerning an employee’s accrued and used leave.

Additional Provisions

Under this ordinance, employers may allow employees to donate their accrued leave to coworkers or to voluntarily exchange hours or to trade shifts instead of using accrued leave. Employers may also advance leave to employees. If employees are transferred to a different facility, location, division, or job position with the employer, they keep pre-transfer accrued leave. The ordinance also provides that employees hired by a successor employer retain leave they accrued with the predecessor employer before the acquisition.

Next Steps

Like the Austin and Dallas Paid Sick Leave Ordinances, we are monitoring the legal challenges currently being made within the state courts. We will provide updates as soon as they are available.

For more information regarding this ordinance, please click here.

 

Thank you for choosing Paylocity as your Payroll Tax and HCM partner. 

This information is provided as a courtesy, may change and is not intended as legal or tax guidance. Employers with questions or concerns outside the scope of a Payroll Service Provider are encouraged to seek the advice of a qualified CPA, Tax Attorney or Advisor.