 I'm really happy to be here to present about the workplace rights of pregnant workers. As Lori mentioned, I am Sharon Terman, I direct the work and family program at legal aid at work. And I'm joined by my colleague Deanna, do you want to introduce yourself. Yes, hi everyone, my name is Deanna Savian Gutierrez, and I'm legal fellow for the work and family program at legal aid at work and excited to have you all on today. Well, so we can jump right in and just wanted to let you know that Deanna and I will be sharing their presentation. I'll start and then she will finish up and we're happy to save time for questions at the end. Feel free to put questions in the chat as we go. And we look forward to, to this presentation so first a word about legal aid at work we are a nonprofit legal aid organization our mission is to protect and improve the workplace rights of families with low incomes. We are based here in San Francisco but we serve workers around the state of California, and we provide free legal advice and information through free help lines and clinics, we represent workers whose rights are violated. We engage in policy advocacy to improve workplace rights, and we do a lot of public education like today's presentation for the community, and the work and family program protects the employment rights of pregnant individuals and caregivers and workers facing family and medical crises. Okay, so today we're going to talk about a number of workplace protections that were pregnant workers have. But we wanted to start off with kind of orienting folks in two key rights to think about. One is the right to take time off with job protection, meaning the security of knowing that you'll have a job to go back to after you take the leave. And then the second thing to keep in mind is, how do you get paid while you're taking time off work. And those two rights are distinct. Of course, most people are concerned about both of those things and so we'll talk about today how pregnant individuals can can ensure that they have both job protection and pay while they're taking time off work. But I just wanted to make sure that those two concepts are in mind as we go through today's presentation for in terms of job protection there are job protection laws in California that protect many workers. And then there are separate programs that provide for pay. Two of them are really that I will talk about are administered by the Employment Development Department. That is disability insurance and paid family leave. And then in San Francisco we have our own separate ordinance called the paid parental leave ordinance which I'll also discuss that allows for supplemental pay on top of the pay that you can get from the So the first law I want to talk about today is California's pregnancy disability leave law or PDL. This is actually a fairly unique law around the country. There are not many places that have this kind of protection. And what it does is it allows pregnant workers to take up to four months of job protected, but unpaid leave, while they are actually disabled by pregnancy childbirth or a related condition. And it's very protective it covers. Almost all workers basically everyone who is who works for an employer with five or more employees. And that is regardless of whether you're full time or part time, and also, regardless of how long you've been on the job. This leave can also be used for prenatal care, and it can be used intermittently so for example if you need to take a week here or a week there, that is permitted. And it also allows for workers to have their health benefits, if they get health insurance through their employer to be continued for the duration of their leave. And now I noted that this law provides up to four months of job protected leave, but I wanted to make clear that that is only while someone actually needs to leave due to their condition. And that is something that's determined by a health care provider. For a normal uncomplicated pregnancy, typically, believe begins four weeks before your due date, and will continue for either six to four eight weeks after delivery, six weeks for vaginal delivery, eight weeks for a C section. If someone needs more time either prior to the four weeks before childbirth, or after the six or eight weeks, they can get more time up to four months, provided their doctor certifies that need or their health care provider certifies that need. So for example, if someone needs to go in bed rest early, or if they develop postpartum depression or other complications, they can extend that leave and there are actually even additional disability protection that might allow workers to get even beyond four months if the situation warrants it. So just to keep that in mind. All right, next slide please. Okay, so the law we just talked about was a job protection law, it holds your job and gives you the right to take leave. Now I want to talk about one of the income replacement programs that I alluded to earlier and this is one that folks may have heard about it's called the California State Disability Insurance Program. The disability insurance is a program administered again by the EDG Employment Development Department. And it covers basically everyone who pays in to the program, and most people do pay in, you can check your paycheck, and it should show that you're making a contribution to, it might say CA SDI or SDI. If you have earned enough money in a particular period called a base period in the past before you make your claim, then you will be eligible to draw down these benefits when you have a need to disability insurance is available for a whole host of non workplace related injuries or illnesses disabilities, but it also covers pregnancy childbirth and related conditions. It is a one week waiting period so when you file your claim, you file it on the first day essentially that you are disabled by your condition, and then you'll have to serve a one week unpaid waiting period. But after the waiting period your benefits will begin, and the benefits are it's not 100% pay it's partial pay, and it is 60% for higher income workers, 70% for the lowest income workers so most people will receive that 60% pay. One note about the waiting period if you have been diagnosed with COVID-19 or COVID-19 related condition that waiting period has been waived for the duration of the public health emergency. Okay, now I want to switch back to a different job protection law. This is earlier about pregnancy disability leave and that's the job protection law that covers your job and covers your leave for the time that you are actually disabled by pregnancy or childbirth. The California Family Rights Act is a law that protects your job and gives you the right to take time off while you're bonding with a new child. I note that most people begin to bond with their child as soon as the baby arrives, of course, but the law considers these as two separate periods of time. So you have the time to prepare for having a child having a child recovering from childbirth, that's for your own disability. Once your disability ends and you've recovered, then you can begin a separate period of leave to bond and that is called bonding leave under the California Family Rights Act. And this law gives you 12 weeks of job protected leave. It also includes a requirement to continue health insurance benefits. You should, as a pregnant worker, have the right to, if you're covered by both of these laws, take up to four months for your pregnancy and childbirth, and then an additional 12 weeks to bond. Now, just a note about the California Family Rights Act, it not only covers bonding, which includes bonding with a newborn child, an adoptive or foster child. That bonding leave has to be completed within 12 months of the child's birth or arrival in the home. But in addition to bonding, this law also covers taking time to care for a family member who has a serious illness. It also covers care for your own serious health condition apart from pregnancy. And it covers qualifying military exigencies. Unfortunately, this law does not cover everybody. It's not as expansive as the pregnancy disability leave law. It was recently expanded to cover a lot more people. So as of January this year, it covers millions more than it covered last year. And this is as a result of a bill that we and many other partners in the state of California worked on to cover workers at smaller employers. So it used to have a limitation that this only covered folks who worked for companies with at least 20 employees for bonding and 50 employees for the other reason. And now it's five employees for all reasons. So that's really a wonderful development. But it does have two other criteria that are important to keep in mind. One is that in order to qualify for this law, you have to have been at your job for one year, and you have to have worked at least 1250 hours in the year before you take your leave. And that works out to be about half time. And so, so it does not cover everybody. But it is more protected than it used to be. And just to clarify, the California Family Rights Act bonding leave, as I mentioned, does not run at the same time as your pregnancy disability leave law. It comes after someone has already recovered from childbirth for the pregnant individual. For parents who do not give birth, it could happen that they could take this leave any time after the child arrives. All right, now switching gears back to another wage replacement program. We want to talk about paid family leave. So paid family leave is a program administered by the Employment Development Department. And like with state disability insurance, as long as you've paid in during your base period via your payroll deduction, you will be eligible for paid family leave. What it gives you is eight weeks per year of partial wage replacement while you are bonding with a new child within one year of the child's arrival in your home, caring for a seriously ill loved one, or addressing a qualifying military exigency. The rate of pay is the same, 60% for most workers, 70% for the lowest income workers. Just like with the job protection law, both parents can take paid family leave either at the same or different time, and the leave can be taken intermittently. I want to say one more word about this, which is that this, the rate of pay, the rate of wage replacement that workers get under this law, 60 or 70%, which is also applied for state disability insurance, is, is actually due to sunset at the end of this year, meaning it will go back to what it used to be, which is 55%, unless the California legislature and governor take action to extend these higher rates. I just wanted to make that note, we and many other advocacy organizations are working hard to try to protect those rates and improve them ultimately because we know that it's really hard to make ends meet, even on these low rates, much less lower. And then there's also a law that I alluded to earlier here in San Francisco called the San Francisco paid parental leave ordinance, and this law was actually motivated by what I was just speaking of which is that the acknowledgement that it is very hard to make ends meet is really for low wage workers on less than their full pay. And so, San Francisco, a number of years ago enacted this ordinance to require employers to top up your paid family leave benefits, so that workers are getting their full pay up to a cap for the duration of paid family leave benefits so this applies during those eight weeks that we referenced earlier of paid family leave you can receive your full pay. You would get 60 or 70% from your from the EDD, and then you would get the remainder directly from your employer. And so, this is however not available to everybody the eligibility requirements here are that you have to be receiving paid family leave from the employer for bonding. You have to have been on the job for 180 days, you have to work a certain amount of time and percentage of your time in San Francisco, and this only applies to workers at companies with 20 or more employees. And it does protect workers from retaliation. Okay, and then paid sick days so this is also, of course, a really timely and important topic. And in San Francisco, which was actually the first jurisdiction in the entire country to pass a paid sick days law. We do not have paid sick days at the federal level, and only a few years ago did we start to have it at the state level but in Francisco's ordinance is more protective than the state law. And so we'll talk about the San Francisco ordinance here which provides nine days for workers at companies with 10 or more employees, or five days for workers at companies with fewer than 10 employees. You can be used for your own illness for rented care for caring for a family member. You do have to have worked at least 90 days to be eligible for paid sick days. And I also wanted to note, given that we're going through this pandemic right now, California has enacted a state law, a temporary state law, which provides supplemental paid sick leave for coven 19 related reasons. And so this is in addition to other paid sick days, but it provides up to 80 hours or two weeks of paid leave for certain coven 19 related reasons. And those reasons include if you yourself have been diagnosed with coven 19 if you have been exposed. If you're getting the vaccine recovering from vaccine side effects. If you're caring for someone who is quarantining or who's sick with coven 19, and it also covers the need to care for a child whose school or regular care is unavailable, because there has been a coven 19 exposure on site where they receive care. And again this is a temporary lots only in effect through September of this year. And I'll pass it on to Diana. Thank you Sharon for going through all those laws. I want to show on this next slide, how all these laws might fit together. I know it can get a little bit complicated. So, I Sharon explained there are a lot of different laws to manage when you're trying to plan your time off for your pregnancy. At the top of the graphic you'll see the laws that cover wage replacement and at the bottom with the red lines you'll see how to protect your job during this time. And so this graph just shows a quote unquote no more pregnancy, or in other words an uncomplicated pregnancy, and how that might work out. So, about 36 weeks, you're going to have availability to apply to state disability insurance. This is about four weeks before your child is due. And so you can apply to the wage replacement piece which is state disability insurance and then you can also apply to or get pregnancy disability leave if there are at least five employees in your company. And so that'll cover from four weeks prior to your birth, until about six weeks recovery. And as Sharon said it's six weeks is usually for a vaginal C section it'll extend to eight weeks for a C section as well. And so during the whole time that you're covered from pregnancy disability leave. You can also stay on that state disability insurance. After your position says you are no longer disabled to do your pregnancy, then you will start your paid family leave. You can use eight weeks to get that partial pay. And at that time, you will also have your job protected under the California Family Rights Act. If you qualify for that. And in San Francisco of course, you can get supplemental pay for eight weeks on top of your paid family leave from your employer so you have to make sure to ask for the San Francisco paid parental leave from your employer and the paid family leave will be from the Edd. After you've exhausted all your pay, you will have an additional four weeks to use under the California Family Rights Act, and you can use that time. You can use that time before your child's first birthday so it doesn't need to be taken all at once but if you need, you know, a few weeks down the road, as long as it's used before your the child's first birthday you can still be entitled to that time. As a note, you might see the Family Medical Leave Act on this graphic. Graphic this is a federal law that covers serious illness and caregiving. But here in California we do have more encompassing laws. And so it's going to work in conjunction with other benefits but not in addition. So you may hear your employer talk about Family Medical Leave Act but we'll talk about the California laws because they are a little bit better. And so you want to make it connect as well for eligible parents or the non birthing parent who wants to take time off to bond with their newborn, adopted or foster child, and a new parent is also able to take 12 weeks of job protected leave. If they qualify for the California Family Rights Act, and they are able to get paid under the paid Family Leave and San Francisco paid parental leave ordinance for eight weeks. The other four weeks are also unpaid, and the leave can be taken once or intermittently, anytime within one year of the child's birth. And so here, it can also be taken in portions when we say intermittently, it can be in few weeks at a time, so long as you make those requirements and you take it before the child's first birthday. Okay, and so during this next slide we're going to talk about pregnancy accommodations. And so during your pregnancy you may need some accommodations to help manage your pregnancy, and employers with five or more employees must provide reasonable accommodations for people affected by pregnancy, childbirth, or any other related condition. The accommodation must be advised by a health care provider so physician your doctor. Some examples of this can be getting a stool for sitting at a register, or avoiding lifting heavy items, and maybe having more frequent breaks. So you can talk to your employer about these accommodations and see, you know what can work for them as well. And we want to make sure that you start small with your accommodation so you want to be specific and talk to your health care, health care provider about your essential job functions and the essential duties there. If you have a limitation that you can't lift, for example, a certain weight you just want to start with a lease restrictive restriction and accommodate from there and to see what works for you that way you can continue working and continue working a little bit more comfortably. And so after you return from your leave, you also are entitled to the rights to lactation accommodations. So if you plan to express milk in California and San Francisco, we do have laws to protect you. So San Francisco's lactation ordinance in California require a space that is safe, clean, shielded from view of other people shielded from intrusion so not just anyone can walk in. You must be free of any toxic chemicals or hazardous materials. You must have some access to electricity so if you're using a electric pump that you can connect. You must have a place to sit and a surface to place your breast pump, and this space cannot be a bathroom so very clear they cannot just send you to the restroom. And you must also have access to a sink with running water and a refrigerator. So this doesn't necessarily need to be exactly in the same room but it needs to be nearby so you can access those things. And your employer must also provide you with a reasonable amount of break time. And they must provide you with a written lactation accommodation policy, usually when you start working or when you ask for your, your lactation accommodations. Additionally, your employer has to provide you with time to express milk a reasonable amount of time. They're not required to pay you for the time that you're expressing milk. They're not required for many rest breaks that you are already entitled to. If you need more time to express milk your employer will be required just to provide that but does not require for you to be clocked in or something. Additionally, we recommend to ask your employer about the space prior to you returning to your job. You and the employer can work on the space prior to your return and you can come in having these accommodations. Next we have another San Francisco ordinance. This is a San Francisco family friendly workplace ordinance. This is a benefit for the right to request a flexible or predictable work arrangement or to assist with caregiving responsibilities for your child or for someone in your family. So to be eligible for this law there must be 20 employees or more, you must have worked as an employee for six months, and you must work at least eight hours on a regular basis. And this is for if you have expect to have the responsibility to care for a child who's under 18, a parent who's 65 or older, or a person with a serious health condition in a family relationship with the employee. So, you know, you need to care for a grandparent or a grandmother needs to care for their grandchild this is also available to, you know, request your employer to see if there's, you know, a flexible arrangement you can do for your work schedule. This is great to keep in mind as you are planning your return to work. And I just wanted to note that an employer can deny a request based on a bona fide business reason. The law also protects employees from discrimination based on their caregiving status and from retaliation for making a request for flexible or predict predictable work arrangements. So you are protected from retaliation. So they cannot come back at you just for requesting it, but if they are. A bona fide business reason usually meaning something that is going to affect their their business. They may be able to deny this right. Next, we have the family school partnership act. And this may be used by a parent, a guardian a step parent, foster parent, grandparent or a person who stands in local parent is to a child, or as acting as a parent to a child. This is for job protected time off it's unpaid, but it's for a max of 40 hours each year to search for or enroll your child in care or school, participate in care school activities, and address child or scalar child or school emergencies including unexpected closures as we as we have seen this year, or the availability of the school or care. So, this right is to use these 40 hours a year to take care of any school related emergencies or planning. And this right covers all California employees with at least 25 employees in the same location. And this is something that can be used in addition to the California Family Rights Act and paid sick days. So this is something also to keep in mind, I'll be it unpaid at least your job is protected for another 40 hours each year if any one of these things may come up. And your employer is allowed to cap the time you take in a week at eight hours per month, but this does not include any emergencies that may arise. So I wanted to review how all these laws work together, and how, you know, it might happen to you or someone in your life. So we're going to review Lupe Lupe is a San Francisco warehouse package and has been working with her employer for about four months. She works 40 hours a week, and there are more than 50 people that also work in the warehouse. Her baby is doing three months and she would want to know what time can she get off for her pregnancy. And so the first question I asked is does she qualify for pregnancy disability leave. And so Sharon talked about this in the very beginning. She does qualify for pregnancy disability leave, because there is no minimum amount of time that you need to work for your employer. There are also at least five people who work in the warehouse. So she would qualify for up to four months of job protected unpaid leave while she is disabled by her pregnancy or by the child birth. If she had an uncomplicated pregnancy and birth, she would be able to take four weeks before her baby is due. And after it'd be about six to eight weeks postpartum. And our second question, does she qualify for job protected bonding leave under the California Family Rights Act. And so, unfortunately, she does not qualify for bonding time because she has not been at the company for more than a year. She will likely not have worked 1250 hours prior to leaving. But if she does meet these requirements down the road, then she'd be able to take 12 weeks of job protected bonding leave within one year of the child's birth. So if she comes back and then meet the requirement, she would get this right with it so long as it's taken within that first year. And then she's only worked for employer for four months, but can she take any portion of her leave, or can she receive pay during this portion of her leave. And so the answer is yes, so long as she has paid into the state disability insurance fund, she can receive the disability insurance while she's on pregnancy disability leave before and after child birth. Aside from the first week, which we talked about is an unpaid waiting period. After her recovery, she can receive eight weeks of partial pay from the paid family leave program. And during that time her employer should pay her the rest of her wages under the San Francisco paid parental leave ordinance. So so long as she's been paying into the state disability insurance fund, which is something that you'll see on your pay stubs. Apply the state disability insurance during this time, and then to paid family leave. And so we have some resources to share with you all. Our website is right up top there, but we have these two great graphics that discuss all the laws that we have just gone through. It goes through what you do with pregnancy in your job, and then with parenting in your job as well. And it talks about all the details of the San Francisco laws, the California laws and how they interact. So I welcome you to look at this resource when you're trying to plan your pregnancy leave or if you're parenting and trying to plan that time off. And if you need a little bit more guidance. I also recommend to look at our roadmap, and this is kind of outlines the timeline for when everything's happening. And so it can get confusing, especially right before you're about to give birth but this roadmap is a great guy that'll walk you through it and try to explain the laws with lots of colors to make it fun. And we have an additional booklet that accompanies it so it has a lot more information that you can go into detail with about all these laws when you should apply for these laws how and what they actually are. And so we have finally our website where you can access these resources, and we have our work and family helpline if you are at all confused about what rights you have or where you should apply it please give us a call. We're here to assist you it is a free and confidential helpline. So we will not be communicating to your employer will not be surprising you with a bill we want for you to have the legal resources to take this time off. So if you want to open up this time to any questions that you may have feel free. If you're comfortable sharing in the chat or if you want to ask a question you can unmute yourself as well. I see Josephine has a question. Oh good because it says that you I was unable to be a mute so then I realized. So, um, Deanna or Sharon, the dot the site or the slide that had your resources. They were really small. Oh resources with your, your website. So the little icons were very small. So are the same pictures that is on your slide for resources with your website. Will all that information be on your website. Yes, all that information is on our website. It's a full PDF version. This is just a little picture of what I thought for certain people like myself. It looks really, really small. So I just wanted to make sure all the resources or the diagram does describe or at least have the information for people once they get on the website. So it does. Okay, good. Thank you. It does. You can download and print them out and it is available and a few different languages to access and to share. Oh good. Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. Other questions. I see a question in the chat about information about leave for fathers. And yes, actually, the materials that Deanna referred to. This is our pregnancy and my job back sheet. You'll see it's actually this shows the two sides of the two sided one page back sheet and the first page says pregnancy in my job and that discusses the rights of the person who gives birth. And on the on the back page, that'll show the rights of the person who does not give birth. So whether that's a father or same sex partner or an adoptive or foster parent. That page will show what rights that person has and also will give at the bottom. So the timeline that give that similar to the timeline that Deanna showed earlier in the presentation here that sort of shows how everything works together for a typical person in that situation. And the other resource that Deanna mentioned pregnancy and my job a roadmap and the accompanying guide, although that is focused on the rights of pregnant workers it also discusses the rights of the other parent. So you can find more information out there. And it again if folks have specific questions about the rights of birthing and non birthing parents are welcome to call our work and family helpline. And we may actually be coming out soon with a, you know, a non birthing parents specific resource. So be on the lookout for that as well. Other question. I know it can be a little bit daunting coming through all these laws and where and how to ask so our resources are always available but we do answer any specific questions you may have and have other resources for how to ask your employer for either accommodations, or how and when to take your your time off and in San Francisco, since we do have some great ordinances that that help during this time. We are also available to offer any suggestions on that and how to make sure you, you can try to qualify for for that. And to that point we also on our website have sample request letters that employees can use that have all the right information in them and so you can just fill out, you know, your name and the date and your specifics and turn that into your employer. We recommend keeping a copy of any, any request that you give to your employer just to have that documentation so you can take a picture of it on your phone you can email it to yourself that your personal email. And we also have sample letters from healthcare providers so for example if you need an accommodation or pregnancy disability leave from from job from your job and your employer says what can I have a note from your healthcare provider. We have sample letters on our website under the do it yourself or get help section that you can give to your healthcare provider to say you know here's the sample communities fill this out. And so, feel free to take a look, look there as well. I did want to mention one more thing which is that all the rights we talked about today are available regardless of immigration status. So, so that's an important point that undocumented workers are also able to access all of these benefits and rights. Thank you so much. Oh, thank you Lori. Yeah, it's something that we can also help you counsel if you are an undocumented worker and go through how to apply to these, these rights and applications. But if there's no questions, I'll turn it over to you Lori. Thank you so much Sharon and Diana. We really, really appreciate you taking the time to share with us the different federal state and law. Yes. But sorry to interrupt. There's actually one question. Yeah, someone asked how do you, how do these laws apply when you're a remote worker and your company is out of state. Yeah, it's a great question. So if you work remotely in California, and you report to an employer that is based elsewhere. In general, you, if you're working in the state of California, you are required to be granted the rights and protections of California law. And then there are some more specific rules, for example, around how to count the number of employees for purposes of some of these laws. So for those specific questions, and we probably would recommend you calling our health line so we can walk you through which laws you're referring to but for example, with at least some of these laws, you would look to where you report to the headquarters to where you report and to determine whether there's a sufficient number of employees but happy to answer those kinds of specific questions on our health line. Thank you again. Thank you for taking the time to share with us the different federal state and legal laws that protect families. And I also want to thank everyone for joining. I hope you find the presentation informative and helpful to you. We'll be sending out an evaluation survey together with Sharon and Dennis PowerPoint and a link to the recording later today. Please give us feedback so we can continue to improve our programs. Again, thank you everybody have a wonderful rest of your day. Bye bye. Thank you.