AbsentEase
California sick leave law & call-off rules
California is the most regulated attendance environment in the country: statutory paid sick leave of at least 40 hours or 5 days a year, eight cities with their own local ordinances (seven stricter than the state floor), accrued vacation treated as earned wages, meal and rest premiums, and a final paycheck due the moment you terminate. An attendance policy can absolutely still be enforced here — but every piece has to be built around what the law protects. Here is what applies in 2026.
California at a glance
| Paid sick leave mandate | Yes — 40 hours / 5 days per year minimum, all employer sizes (SB 616) |
|---|---|
| Accrual | 1 hour per 30 worked; accrual capped at 80 hours / 10 days |
| Attendance points on sick time | Prohibited — § 246.5(c) bars counting protected sick leave; 30-day retaliation presumption after a Labor Commissioner complaint or investigation |
| Local ordinances | 8 city ordinances — 7 exceed state minimums (SF, Oakland, Emeryville, Berkeley, LA, Santa Monica, West Hollywood); San Diego now matches the state floor |
| Vacation / PTO at termination | Accrued vacation and PTO are wages — payout required, use-it-or-lose-it banned |
| Final paycheck deadline | Fired: immediately · Quit: within 72 hours (or last day, with 72 hours' notice) |
| Meal & rest breaks | Required — missed periods owe 1 hour of premium pay each per day |
Is paid sick leave required in California?
Yes. The Healthy Workplaces, Healthy Families Act (Labor Code §§ 245–249, expanded by SB 616 effective 2024) applies to employers of every size and to any employee who works 30+ days a year in California, including part-time and temporary workers. Employees accrue at least 1 hour per 30 hours worked; annual use may be capped at 40 hours or 5 days (whichever is greater) and total accrual at 80 hours or 10 days. Eight cities — including San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Berkeley — layer their own ordinances on top, seven of them stricter than the state floor (San Diego's now matches it), and you must follow whichever rule is most generous.
How California's sick leave law works
| Accrual rate | 1 hour per 30 hours worked from day one (use may be delayed until day 90) |
|---|---|
| Use / accrual caps | Use: 40 hours or 5 days per year · Accrual: 80 hours or 10 days — same minimums for every employer size |
| Carryover | Required if accruing — or front-load the full 40 hours / 5 days each year and skip both accrual tracking and carryover |
| Covered uses | Diagnosis, care, treatment, or preventive care for the employee or a broadly defined family member (including a "designated person"), plus safe leave for victims of violence |
| Doctor's notes | The statute gives employers essentially no right to condition statutory sick pay on a doctor's note — the Labor Commissioner treats demanding certification as potential unlawful denial, at any absence length. The DLSE's one carve-out: documentation may be reasonable when the employer has information that the leave isn't being used for a valid purpose |
| Local ordinances | San Francisco, Oakland, Emeryville, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Santa Monica, and West Hollywood exceed the state minimums; San Diego's ordinance now matches the state floor (1 per 30, 40-hour use, 80-hour accrual) since SB 616 |
The anti-retaliation rule: Labor Code § 246.5(c)(1) prohibits counting statutory sick leave against an employee under an attendance policy. A separate presumption in § 246.5(c)(2) makes adverse action within 30 days of an employee filing a complaint with the Labor Commissioner, cooperating with an investigation, or opposing a prohibited practice rebuttably retaliatory — it attaches to those steps, not to the sick-leave use itself. Points, occurrences, or "unexcused pending documentation" flags on protected sick days are the classic violation.
The federal floor that still applies
FMLA
Employers with 50+ employees within 75 miles must give eligible employees (12+ months tenure, 1,250+ hours in the past year) up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave for a serious health condition — their own or a close family member's. FMLA-protected absences can't accrue attendance points, and a call-off that mentions an ongoing condition can be notice enough to trigger your FMLA obligations, even if the employee never says "FMLA."
ADA
For employers with 15+ employees, the ADA can require modified attendance expectations or unpaid leave as a reasonable accommodation for a disability. An attendance policy applied "no exceptions" is exactly the kind that loses ADA cases — build an accommodation carve-out into the policy itself.
FLSA overtime and attendance bonuses
A cash bonus promised in advance for good attendance counts as wages under federal overtime law. It has to be added into the regular rate for the weeks it covers, so any of those weeks over 40 hours owes extra overtime on the bonus, usually recalculated after the bonus is paid. State overtime law can add to this, but can't go below it. See how attendance bonuses change overtime pay.
Call-offs, no-call no-shows, and firing in California
California employment is nominally at-will (Labor Code § 2922), and a genuine no-call no-show can still be disciplined. But the margin for error is the thinnest in the country: protected sick leave can't take points, adverse action within 30 days of a Labor Commissioner complaint or investigation is presumed retaliatory, and you can't lean on doctor's notes to sort real sick days from soft ones. That leaves exactly one reliable defense — the contemporaneous record. When the Labor Commissioner's office (DLSE) looks at a wage or retaliation claim, what decides it is whether you can show each absence, what the employee said at the time, how it was classified, and that the same rules were applied to everyone. A call-off hotline or text-based call-off system that keeps the employee's own message, time-stamped, is the difference between a document and a dispute.
After a no call, no show termination in California
| Does California law define job abandonment? | No statute or regulation defines job abandonment; it is set by employer policy. (Cal. Unemp. Ins. Code § 1256; Cal. Code Regs. tit. 22, § 1256-31(c); § 1256-1) |
|---|---|
| Final paycheck if you treat it as a discharge | When an employer discharges an employee, wages earned and unpaid are due and payable immediately. An employer that willfully fails to pay owes a waiting-time penalty equal to the employee's daily wages for each day the wages remain unpaid, up to 30 days (Lab. Code § 203(a)). (Cal. Lab. Code § 201(a); penalty § 203(a)) |
| Final paycheck if you treat it as a resignation | An employee who quits without giving 72 hours' previous notice must be paid within 72 hours of quitting; an employee who gave at least 72 hours' notice must be paid at the time of quitting. An employee who quits without notice may request payment by mail to a designated address, and the mailing date counts as the payment date. The Labor Commissioner notes that if an employer treats a resignation as a discharge, wages become due immediately under § 201(a). (Cal. Lab. Code § 202(a)) |
| Accrued PTO at separation | Payout required by state law. Unless a collective bargaining agreement provides otherwise, all vested, unused vacation must be paid as wages at the final rate when employment ends, and a policy providing for forfeiture of vested vacation on termination is void; the Labor Commissioner applies the same rule to combined PTO plans while allowing reasonable accrual caps. (Cal. Lab. Code § 227.3) |
| Unemployment claims | Unemployment Insurance Code § 1256 disqualifies a claimant who left the most recent work voluntarily without good cause or was discharged for misconduct; under Cal. Code Regs. tit. 22, § 1256-31(c), a discharge for an absence taken without notifying the employer is misconduct unless a real, substantial, and compelling reason excuses the failure to give notice, and whether a no-show separation is a quit or a discharge depends on which party was the moving party under Cal. Code Regs. tit. 22, § 1256-1. |
If a state agency later treats a "resignation" as a discharge, the discharge deadline governs, so pay by the earlier of the two when in doubt. Document each step with the no call, no show write-up and termination letter templates, which fill in California's final-pay rule.
Write a no call, no show policy that fits California
Start from our no call, no show policy guide and free template, or let the generator turn nine quick questions into a signature-ready policy with California already selected so the protected-leave section names the state law described above.
PTO payout and final paychecks
| Scenario | Rule | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Employee is fired or laid off | Final pay due immediately, at the place of discharge; each day late accrues a full day's wages in waiting-time penalties, up to 30 days | Labor Code §§ 201, 203 |
| Employee quits | Due within 72 hours — or on the last day if the employee gave at least 72 hours' notice | Labor Code § 202 |
| Unused vacation / PTO | Earned wages — all accrued, unused vacation and general-purpose PTO must be paid at the final rate; use-it-or-lose-it policies are void | Labor Code § 227.3 |
| Unused sick leave (stand-alone bank) | No payout required — but if sick time lives inside a combined PTO bank, the entire bank is payable; balances reinstate on rehire within 12 months | Labor Code § 246(g) |
Keeping sick leave as a separate bank (not folded into PTO) is what keeps it off the termination-payout bill — a genuinely consequential policy design choice in California. See how PTO accrual works.
Leave California employers must (and must not) provide
| Leave type | Required? | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Paid sick leave | Yes — paid | Per the mechanics above; local ordinances may add more |
| Meal & rest breaks | Yes | 30-minute meal before the end of the 5th hour, paid 10-minute rest per 4 hours; each miss owes an hour of premium pay |
| Voting | Yes — paid | Up to 2 hours at shift start or end if the employee lacks time outside work; 2 working days' notice |
| Jury duty | Yes — unpaid | Job-protected with reasonable notice; retaliation prohibited |
| Military | Yes | USERRA plus California Military and Veterans Code protections |
The California employer's attendance playbook
- Put it in writing. A written policy — call-off deadline and channel, points or steps, the no-call no-show rule, and carve-outs for legally protected absences — is what makes discipline defensible. Our attendance policy guide walks through it.
- Give call-offs one channel. "Tell whoever answers" is how records get lost. One number every employee texts or calls makes the record automatic.
- Log everything with timestamps. Unemployment hearings and discrimination charges are won on contemporaneous records, not recollections.
- Enforce consistently. Uneven enforcement converts a lawful termination into a discrimination claim.
- Screen call-offs for protected reasons before applying points — sickness that could be state-protected sick time or FMLA/ADA territory gets a different track than an overslept alarm.
Comparing states? See all published guides on the state sick leave laws hub.