Key Highlights

• New York City’s Earned Safe and Sick Time Act (ESSTA) adds 32 hours of frontloaded unpaid safe/sick time to its existing paid safe/sick time requirements for employers.
• The ESSTA also expands the permissible uses for both types of leave under the Act to include scenarios tied to caregiving, housing or subsistence proceedings, public disasters and workplace violence.
• Employers, however, will no longer be required to grant a set number of temporary schedule changes; employees, instead, will enjoy a protected right to request such changes.

What Is Changing on February 22, 2026?

New York City employers should prepare for significant changes to the City’s ESSTA taking effect February 22, 2026—joining changes to New York state laws affecting disparate impact liability and the use of “stay-or-pay” contracts. The amended ESSTA includes a new bank of 32 hours of unpaid safe/sick time, expanded permissible uses of safe/sick time and a scaling back of obligations under the City’s Temporary Schedule Change Act (TSCA).

1. Employers must provide 32 hours of unpaid safe/sick time in addition to paid ESSTA leave.

The ESSTA will require employers to provide employees, upon hire and on the first day of each calendar year, a minimum of 32 hours of unpaid safe/sick time that is immediately available for use. Employers will not, however, be required to carry over unused hours from this unpaid bank to the next calendar year. The Act further contemplates that when an employee...

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