California Labor Guidance
Free plain-English summaries of opinion letters, administrative policies, and interpretive notices from California's labor agency, with the current status and the official source on every page.
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Calculating paid sick leave pay for commissioned and exempt employees
An attorney asked how to calculate paid sick leave pay for an employee paid almost entirely by commission, and separately for an exempt employee who also receives an annual bonus. DLSE explains that a…
Front-loading paid sick leave hours for employees on longer shifts
An attorney asked whether an employer using the "no accrual, front-load" option for paid sick leave under the Healthy Workplaces, Healthy Families Act must front-load three days at an employee's actua…
Deducting partial-day absences of exempt employees from leave balances
An employer asked whether it could deduct hours from an exempt employee's accrued vacation or sick leave bank for a series of specific partial-day absence scenarios. DLSE confirmed that while an exemp…
Whether undifferentiated PTO counts as sick leave for Kin Care and is subject to vacation vesting
A law firm asked whether an employer's undifferentiated paid-time-off (PTO) bank — which lets employees take days off for any reason without distinguishing vacation from sick time — counts as sick lea…
Labor Code section 233: sick leave to attend to family
An HR consultant asked three questions about California's "kin care" law, Labor Code section 233: whether it covers public employers, whether a collective bargaining agreement addressing sick leave ca…
An undifferentiated 'PTO' bank that mixes vacation, sick leave, and personal days is treated entirely as vacation pay, which cannot be forfeited
A staffing company asked DLSE to review a "Paid Time Off" (PTO) policy that lumped vacation, holidays, sick leave, and personal days into one accrual bank, capped at 26 days, with only 10 days carried…
Sick leave convertible to 'personal compelling business' time is treated as vacation
A bank's personnel assistant asked DLSE about a policy letting employees use 3 days (24 hours) of earned sick leave for "personal compelling business" once 80 hours of sick leave had accrued. DLSE con…
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These are official interpretive documents from California's labor agency: opinion letters answering questions from employers and workers, administrative policies, and interpretive notices. They show how the agency applies wage-and-hour and workplace law to real situations, but they are guidance, not statutes or court decisions, and the agency can supersede or withdraw them. Every page above shows the document's current status, when that status was last verified, and a link to the official source.