As a physician at the Sacramento County Health Center, Dr. Sharad Jain said he has watched as patients and their family members have been forced to choose between providing for their loved ones financially and staying at their bedside to care for them.
“These are situations that, at the moment, for low-income workers, there is no good answer,” Jain said. “It just feels very unfair.”
A new law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday aims to alleviate that burden for millions of workers across California.
Twenty years after California became the first state in the nation to offer paid family leave, Newsom signed Senate Bill 951 into law to boost the portion of a worker’s salary that would be covered should they choose to take time off work to bond with a new child or care for a sick family member.
“California families and our state as a whole are stronger when workers have the support they need to care for themselves and their loved ones,” Newsom said in a statement. “California created the first Paid Family Leave program in the nation 20 years ago, and today we’re taking an important step to ensure more low-wage workers, many of them women and people of color, can access the time off they’ve earned while still providing for their family.”
The new law will extend the state’s current wage replacement rates through 2024 and increase them starting on Jan. 1, 2025, from 70% to 90% for low-wage workers earning less than $57,000 a year and from 60% to 70% for all other eligible...
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