Employer provided benefit: backup childcare.

Existing law, the Healthy Workplaces, Healthy Families Act of 2014, requires employers to provide an employee, who works in California for 30 or more days within a year from the commencement of employment, with paid sick days for prescribed purposes, to be accrued at a rate of no less than one hour for every 30 hours worked. Existing law authorizes an employer to limit an employee's use of paid sick days to 24 hours or 3 days in each year of employment. This bill would require an employer to provide an employee, on or after January 1, 2022, who works in California for the same employer for 30 or more days within a year from the commencement of employment, with up to 60 hours of paid backup childcare benefits, to be accrued and used as provided. The bill would define "backup childcare" as childcare provided by a qualified backup childcare provider to the employee's child when the employee's regular childcare provider cannot be utilized, and "paid backup childcare" as an employee benefit consisting of the employer paying for a qualified backup childcare provider to provide backup childcare for an employee's child that is compensated at the state minimum wage or the federal minimum wage, whichever is higher. This bill would apply to employers with 1,000 or more employees, the state, political subdivisions of the state, and municipalities, including charter cities. The bill would require employers to keep records for at least 3 years documenting the hours worked and paid backup childcare benefits used by the employee and to allow the Labor Commissioner to access those records. The bill would provide that if an employer does not maintain adequate records, the employee is presumed to have accrued the maximum number of benefit hours accruable, unless the employer can prove otherwise by clear and convincing evidence. The bill would include findings that changes proposed by this bill address a matter of statewide concern rather than a municipal affair and, therefore, apply to all cities, including charter cities.