For the New Year, Colorado Makes COVID-19 the Gift That Keeps Giving (Paid Time Off)
January 15, 2021
Authored by: Anthony George
On the night before Christmas Eve, the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment (CDLE) issued a surprise opinion that Colorado employers are required to provide still more paid sick leave for COVID-19 in 2021. In its Interpretive Notice & Formal Opinion #6C (INFO #6C), CDLE opined that all Colorado employers would be required, as of January 1, 2021, to grant employees up to 80 more hours of paid sick leave for COVID-related absences pursuant to the Healthy Families and Workplaces Act (HFWA). INFO #6C can be found here.
Background:
- In response to COVID-19, Section 406 of the HFWA required all Colorado employers, in 2020, to provide the Emergency Paid Sick Leave described in the federal Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA), without regard to the coverage provisions of the FFCRA. As a result, in 2020, Colorado employers of all sizes were required to provide up to 80 hours of paid sick leave for certain COVID-related absences described in the FFCRA. That requirement under Section 406 expired with 2020.
- To address possible future pandemics, the Colorado General Assembly also included Section 405 in the HFWA. Under Section 405, “on the date a public health emergency is declared, each employer in the state shall supplement each employee’s accrued paid sick leave as necessary to ensure that an employee may take” up to 80 additional hours of paid sick leave for an expanded list of authorized absences. That requirement was commonly understood to apply if a new public health emergency were