Hi there,

an employee of ours has just announced her pregnancy (congrats to her). We are an employer of more than 5 but less than 50 employees based in California. I've read through a lot of the messages (btw, this really is a super resource - thanks to all the volunteers) and my understanding for my employee is that her legal entitlements are: (i) she can take up to 4 months protected leave (the actual time depends on the disability cert from her doctor) during which she is paid by the State (at up to 55% of salary) and her job is protected and (ii) after that time, she can take a further 6 weeks paid family leave, paid by the State at the same rate but during which time her job is not officially protected.

Our employee gets a percentage of salary to apply to health benefits and also receives paid holidays, accruing on a monthly basis. My question is whether she is entitled to the continuation of the payment of the health benefits even if she is not being paid by the company and whether vacation time will continue to accrue while she is absent? I would imagine the answer is "no" in both cases but I wanted to check for sure

This is our first pregnant employee so I'm really just trying to get the min. entitlements straight so we can work from there to get to what's fair.

Thanks all
Irish InHouse

The general rule is that you must treat the pregnant employee no different than your other employees. As a result, if you normally pay for employee benefits when an employee takes an unpaid leave, then you need to follow the same policy for the pregnant employee. Due to your size, I would be surprised if you paid benefits during unpaid leave. However, you will have to offer the employee COBRA to allow her to continue her benefits during the unpaid leave.

Again, assuming that your normal policy is to not accrue vacation or sick time during unpaid leaves, then the pregnant employee would not accrue these benefits during her time off.

Your initial summary of her leave rights seemed accurate.

Just wanted to chime in that 1) your understanding is correct, and 2) tdpass1 is also correct.