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 stricter local ordinances, 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 bars counting protected sick leave; 30-day retaliation presumption |
| Local ordinances | 8 cities exceed state minimums (SF, Oakland, Emeryville, Berkeley, LA, San Diego, Santa Monica, West Hollywood) |
| 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, Berkeley, and San Diego — layer stricter ordinances on top, 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 |
| Local ordinances | San Francisco, Oakland, Emeryville, Berkeley, Los Angeles, San Diego, Santa Monica, and West Hollywood all exceed the state minimums |
The anti-retaliation rule: Labor Code § 246.5(c) prohibits counting statutory sick leave against an employee under an attendance policy, and any adverse action within 30 days of protected sick-leave use is rebuttably presumed retaliatory. 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.
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 sick-leave use 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.
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.