Measure would have extended coverage to care for extended family, domestic partners
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California Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a bill Sunday that would have expanded the state’s unpaid family leave laws.
Senate Bill 406 would have added stipulations to the California Family Rights Act allowing workers to take up to 12 weeks of job-protected leave to care for sick domestic partners, grandparents, grandchildren, siblings and parents-in-law. The current law, similar to federal law, allows workers to take that leave to care for sick children, spouses and parents.
“I support the author’s efforts to ensure that eligible workers can take leave to care for a seriously ill family member,” Brown said in a message to the state senate. “The expansion provided in this bill, however, creates a disparity between California’s law and the Federal Medical Leave Act and, in certain circumstances, would require employers to provide employees up to 24 weeks of family leave in a 12-month period. I am open to legislation to allow workers to take leave for additional family members that does not create this anomaly.”
The federal law also allows 12 work weeks of job-protected unpaid leave in a 12-month period to care for a newborn child, a newly adopted child or one newly taken into foster care. It also allows 12 weeks unpaid leave if employees have a health condition that prevents them from doing their job.
Gwyneth Borden, executive director of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, a trade body of foodservice operations in the San Francisco Bay Area, said in an email that the association was “happy that the Governor realized the importance of not having conflicting regulations about family leave. Too often elected officials don’t take into consideration how laws at the state or local level conflict with federal ones and make it hard for businesses to comply.”
The California Restaurant Association declined to comment.
Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected].
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