Recent amendments to New York City’s Earned Safe and Sick Time Act focus on expanding protections for individuals in both the most dire and the most mundane of situations, and substitute employees’ less-known right to a “temporary schedule change” for up to two full days per year (generally 16 hours of time) with a new annual allotment of 32 additional hours of unpaid safe/sick time per year.  It is a legislative compromise of sorts, in which the trade-off for employers is one less statute to worry about, in exchange for two additional days of annual unpaid leave to provide to their employees. 

 Goodbye Temporary Schedule Change Law 

In 2018, New York City adopted a temporary schedule change law, which required employers to permit employees to alter their work schedules (by shifting their hours of work or taking time off without pay) up to twice a year, each time for no longer than one business day.  The temporary changes had to be predicated on a “personal event.”  A personal event included caring for a minor child or a family or household member with a disability, attending legal proceedings for subsistence benefits for the employee or family member, or for reasons covered by the paid safe and sick time law.  The law dictated a very specific process, with timelines, for employers to consider such requests.   It was a cumbersome addition of bureaucratic layers for employers, and in my experience little-used.   

 The prior requirements of the temporary schedule change law have now been replaced with the following: 

•  employees have a legally protected right to request a temporary change in dates, hours, times or locations where the employee is expected to work, which could involve using paid or unpaid time off, remote work, or shifting work hours or swapping shifts – each for a limited duration; 

• employers need not agree to the change, but must respond to the request as soon as practicable; and  

• the employer can propose an alternative, which the employee is not required to accept. 

Hello 32 Additional Hours of Unpaid Annual Leave 

In exchange for the reduced employer burden under the temporary schedule change law, employees will begin with a 32-hour pool of unpaid, job-protected leave on day 1 of employment and at the start of each year, which can be used for all the reasons covered by the city’s safe and sick time law.  This leave augments the pool of 40 hours or 56 hours (if the organization has 100 or more employees) of paid leave that can either be front-loaded or accrued over the course of the year.  It also augments 20 hours of paid prenatal leave that employees have been granted each year under state law, which New York City has now independently codified to be part of its safe/sick time law.   

 The combined effect is that employees now will have a total pool of 92 to 108 hours (11.5 or 13.5 days under a typical 40-hour workweek) of job-protected time off each year for safe and sick time-related reasons.  The only consolation is that any portion of the 32 hours of unpaid leave and 20 hours of paid prenatal leave that is not used by year-end is forfeited (and then replenished with another allotment of 32 hours of unpaid leave and 20 hours of prenatal leave the next year).  Because accrued regular paid safe/sick time does have to be carried over into the next year, this means employers will need to maintain separate tracking for the unpaid, prenatal, and other paid leave components of safe/sick time.  

 Reasons for Taking Job-Protected Time Off Are Expanded  

 Employees will also be granted several additional reasons for using their unpaid and paid safe/sick time.  Those new reasons first echo but expand upon the former grounds for requesting a temporary schedule change: 

• to care for a minor child or for a member of the employee’s family or household who has a disability and relies on the employee for daily care; and 

• to apply for or seek to maintain or restore subsistence  benefits or housing for an employee or an employee’s family member or care recipient. 

They then add leave for public disasters and victims of workplace violence.  Specifically, employees can use safe/sick time: 

• in the event of a public disaster where a public official has restricted travel to or closed the employee’s place of business; 

• to care for a child whose school or childcare provider closed or restricted in-person operations on the order of a public official due to a public disaster; and  

• to obtain help, care, or services when the employee or employee’s family member has been the victim of workplace violence. 

 Add Those Reasons to the Existing List 

As a reminder, employees are also permitted to use safe/sick time: 

• for the employee’s own illness, injury, health condition or preventive medical care; 

• to care of a family member who needs medical diagnosis, care, treatment or preventive care; 

• In the event of a public health emergency where a public official has closed the employee’s place of business; 

• to care for a child whose school or childcare provider closed on the order of a public official due to a public health emergency; or 

• to obtain help, care, or services when the employee or employee’s family member has been the victim of domestic violence, a family offense, a sexual offense, stalking, or human trafficking. 

The list of job-protected reasons for leave has grown lengthier, to match the additional days available for taking that leave.  Under the law, if an employee says they need time off for a covered reason, the employer must grant the safe/sick time unless the employee exhausted all available time or the employee specifically requests to use other leave. 

 Expect a New Form Notice to Be Distributed 

The safe and sick time law has additionally been amended with respect to the written notice that employers must provide to employees.  Instead of detailing all the elements of that notice, the city law now requires employers to specify the interval by which they measure a calendar year and the employee’s right to be free from retaliation and file a complaint.  The city then expressly leaves it to the commissioner to identify any other information the commissioner deems appropriate for inclusion.  The new safe and sick time requirements take effect February 22, 2026, so employers should anticipate the city will be issuing a new form notice in the coming months.   

Employers should use this time before the effective date to review and update their existing safe/sick time policies.  If existing time off policies (which may be a composite of sick, vacation, PTO, personal or other time off) provide employees with the same or more generous amounts of paid and unpaid time off that can be used for the same reasons under the same conditions as the city’s safe and sick time law, then no additional time off needs to be granted.  Of course, what the city (and most legislatures) tend to forget or ignore is that employer policies typically are not voluntarily written to include the same structure of carryover as the safe and sick time law provides, and vacation and PTO policies are generous with time but typically more restrictive with advance notice and approval requirements than the safe and sick time law permits.  It usually is not the time off allotment that trips up more generous employers, but rather the conditions for using that time off allotment that can make it challenging to reconcile legal requirements with employers’ desire to be generous while still ensuring daily coverage for work to get done.  Employers that are unsure whether their existing policies are sufficient to comply with the new city law should get legal advice. 

By Tracey I. Levy