Wednesday: If you’ve lost work as a result of the coronavirus outbreak in California, here’s what to know
By Sona Patel and
California hit grim milestones on Tuesday, as the number of cases in the Bay Area topped 1,000 and Los Angeles County officials said that a teenager’s death was linked to the virus; if the cause of death is confirmed as the coronavirus, he would be one of the youngest victims of the outbreak in the country.
All of that took place against the backdrop of mass layoffs and what state officials have described as a surge in applications for benefits. On Wednesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom said that 1 million Californians had filed for unemployment since March 13.
We asked Sharon Terman, the director of the Work and Family Program and senior staff attorney at the nonprofit Legal Aid at Work, about what Californians who have been directly affected by the Covid-19 outbreak should know.
What benefits are Californians eligible for if they’ve been laid off or lost hours because of Covid-19?
To get benefits, you must meet certain minimum requirements. If your claim is approved, you can receive between $40 and $450 each week, depending on your earnings.
According to guidance from the E.D.D. as of March 19, if you are temporarily out of work and plan to return to the same employer, you do not need to meet the usual requirement of looking for work while you are collecting unemployment insurance. However, if you are not attached to a particular employer with a job to return to, you are required to look for work while collecting benefits. You can do that from home, for example, by searching for jobs online.
If you’re a parent whose child’s school has been canceled, what options do you have for taking leave from work?
Beginning April 2 through Dec. 31, under the federal Families First Coronavirus Response Act, eligible employees can receive 10 paid sick days and up to 12 weeks of extended leave when a parent cannot work because of the closure of a child’s school or child care because of Covid-19.
Workers in California may also be eligible for paid sick days that can be used during school closures under state law, which provides a minimum of three days with full pay. Local laws may provide more.
Additionally, the California Family School Partnership Act entitles workers at employers with 25 or more employees to up to 40 hours of job-protected, unpaid leave per year in a child care emergency, including the closure or unavailability of a school or child care provider.
Beyond paid sick days and paid leave, you can apply for unemployment insurance if you need to care for a child whose school is closed, and you’ve exhausted other options for care.
To illustrate how this works, if you can’t work because you need to care for your child whose school has closed due to Covid-19, you can receive two weeks as paid sick days and 10 more weeks as paid leave, both at two-thirds pay up to $200 per day. After that, if your child’s school is still closed and you cannot work, you can apply for unemployment insurance, which will pay up to $450 per week for up to 26 weeks.
If your child (or another close family member) is sick with Covid-19 or another serious health condition, you can apply for California Paid Family Leave (P.F.L.) to take care of them. P.F.L. provides 60 percent or 70 percent of your wages, depending on income, for six weeks (extended to eight weeks, beginning July 1), and there is no waiting period.
How do you apply for benefits through the state?
You can apply for unemployment insurance online, or by mailing or faxing the application to the Employment Development Department (Spanish version here). You may also apply by phone, but expect long wait times.
Here is a checklist of all the information you’ll need to apply. If it takes you more than five business days to connect by phone, ask the E.D.D. to backdate your claim to the Sunday before you started calling; just keep documentation of your attempts (like screenshots of your call log).
The best way to apply for Paid Family Leave is online, using State Disability Insurance (S.D.I.) Online. The E.D.D. also accepts P.F.L. applications by mail, but you have to request that a hard copy be mailed to you (unlike with unemployment insurance, which allows you to mail or fax a form printed from the E.D.D.’s website).
[Here’s more on what you need for your application].
The Employment Development Department also will require a medical certification or written order from a state or local health officer documenting that your family member is infected with or suspected of being infected with Covid-19. Covered family members include children, parents, parents-in-law, siblings, grandparents and grandchildren. Doctors can upload a certification to the E.D.D. if you apply for benefits online. Otherwise, they have to fill out a portion of the hard copy form.
Employees who are sick with Covid-19 can apply for S.D.I. benefitsonline or by mail. State Disability Insurance provides the same pay rate as Paid Family Leave (60 or 70 percent of your income, up to a cap of $1,300 per week), and can continue for 52 weeks, with no waiting period for coronavirus-related claims. To apply, you will need a certification from a doctor documenting your condition, or a written order from a state or local health officer stating that you have (or are suspected of having) Covid-19.
Although you cannot claim unemployment insurance, S.D.I. and P.F.L. at the same time, you can use these benefits consecutively.
For more information about your workplace rights related to coronavirus, see Legal Aid at Work’s F.A.Q. or contact its virtualWorkers’ Rights Clinic at (415) 404-9093 for a free, confidential consultation.
As an employer, what am I required to provide for my employees if they need to take sick time or care for a relative because of Covid-19?
Effective April 2 through Dec. 31, the federal Families First Coronavirus Response Act will require government employers and private employers with fewer than 500 employees to provide 10 paid sick days to workers to address their own Covid-19 illness, mandatory self-isolation or quarantine (at 100 percent pay, up to $511 per day).
All employers in California also must provide at least three paid sick days at full pay, and employers in several localities are required to provide more. Paid sick days can be used for an employee’s own illness or a family member’s, including preventive care.
Under California law, employers with at least 50 employees must provide up to 12 weeks of job-protected leave, with continued health benefits, to an employee who is seriously ill or who needs to care for a seriously ill parent, minor or adult dependent child, spouse or registered domestic partner. Employees are eligible if they have been on the job for one year and have worked 1,250 hours in the year before their leave begins.
Source: Sona Patel and
