01-12-2022
In December 2021, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a new law requiring that domestic workers receive paid sick leave. Approximately, 10,000 individuals working in private homes will be impacted by the new law. The proposed ordinance defines domestic workers as those individuals caring for a child, serving as a non-medical companion, helping to clean, cook, and serve food, working as a gardener, acting as a personal organizer, and working in any other in-home personal or domestic service. The ordinance includes domestic workers living in the homes of hiring households.
The “Domestic Workers’ Equal Access to Paid Sick Leave” ordinance allows domestic workers who work for multiple households to earn and consolidate their benefits from different employers. Thus, each employer will pay one hour of wages into the sick leave fund for every 30 hours of service from a domestic worker. Both the hiring household and the domestic worker are responsible for reporting the number of hours worked and the net pay rate to the “paid sick leave” system. The hiring household is responsible for any contribution-related tax withholding or tax reporting obligations at the time the paid sick leave funds are transferred. The funds are only transferred when the domestic workers request them.
The bill is not yet in effect. The Board of Supervisors must vote on it again, and then it must be signed by the Mayor. The city will hire a private company to administer the benefits program. The ordinance will likely go into effect in 2022.