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Key Takeaways


Recent amendments to the New York City Earned Safe and Sick
Time Act will require New York City employers to provide employees
with 32 hours of unpaid safe and sick leave annually as well as
expand the reasons for employees to use available leave under the
act.

The amendments also roll back employer obligations to provide
temporary schedule changes under the New York City Temporary
Schedule Change Act.

Employers should make necessary updates to handbooks and
policies before the amendments take effect Feb. 22, 2026.

In October, the New York City Council enacted amendments to the
Earned Safe and Sick Time Act (ESSTA), introducing new obligations
for employers, expanding employee rights and codifying the rules promulgated earlier this
year requiring paid prenatal leave. Providing some relief to
employers, the amendments also eliminate employers’ obligation
to provide temporary schedule changes under the Temporary Schedule
Change Act (TSCA). As 2025 winds down and employers start updating
employee handbooks for 2026, these changes, which take effect Feb.
22, 2026, require immediate attention to ensure compliance.

Additional Unpaid Leave Entitlement

Currently, New York City employers must provide up to 40 or 56
hours of paid safe and sick leave under ESSTA, depending on the
employer’s size and income. The recent amendments to ESSTA do
not change that. However, they do impose a new obligation on
employers. Now, all employers, regardless of size, must provide all
employees with a separate bank of 32 hours of unpaid safe
and sick leave. (Yes, this is in addition to the 40 or 56 hours of
paidsafe and sick leave and the 20 hours of prenatal leave
already required!) As set forth below, employees are now entitled
to three different banks of leave, which must be kept – and
tracked – separately:




Type of Leave
Hours Available





Paid safe and sick leave
56 hours/year for employers with
100-plus employees

40 hours/year for employers with fewer than 100 employees

(for employers with four or fewer employees and net income

less than $1 million, this time can be unpaid)





Paid prenatal leave
20 hours/52-week period



Unpaid safe and sick leave
32 hours/year

The new unpaid safe and sick leave of 32 hours must be made
immediately available to employees at the time of hire and must
also be made available to all employees on the first day of each
calendar year. Although employers cannot impose a waiting period on
usage of the unpaid leave, they may set a minimum usage increment
of up to four hours per day (just like with paid safe and sick
leave).

If an employee requests time off for an ESSTA-covered reason,
employers must apply available paid leave before unpaid leave,
unless the employee asks to use unpaid leave first. Like with paid
leave, employers must include, on pay stubs or other documentation
provided to employees each pay period, the amount of unpaid safe
and sick time used and available to the employee. However, unlike
paid safe and sick leave, employers are not required to carry over
unused unpaid leave from year to year.

Expanded Permissible Uses

In addition to expanding the amount of leave available to NYC
employees, the amendments expand the reasons employees may use such
leave. When the amendments go into effect, employees may use safe
and sick leave for the following reasons:


Caregiving: Employees who qualify as
caregivers may use available leave to care for a minor child or
“care recipient.” A caregiver is “a person who
provides direct and ongoing care for a minor child or a care
recipient,” and a care recipient is “a person with a
disability, including a temporary disability, who (i) is the
caregiver’s family member or resides in the caregiver’s
household and (ii) relies on the caregiver for medical care or to
meet the needs of daily living.”

Subsistence benefits and housing: Employees
may use their leave “to initiate, attend or prepare for a
legal proceeding or hearing related to subsistence benefits or
housing to which the employee, the employee’s family member, or
the employee’s care recipient is a party, or to take actions
necessary to apply for, maintain, or restore subsistence benefits
or shelter for the employee or their family member or care
recipient.”

Workplace violence: An employee may take leave
if the employee or their family member has been a victim of
workplace violence, which is defined as “any act or threat of
violence against an employee that occurs in a place of
employment.”

Public disasters: Employees may use safe and
sick time if a public disaster (as defined by ESSTA) results in (i)
the closure of the employee’s workplace, (ii) a directive from
public officials to remain indoors or avoid travel, or (iii) a need
to care for a child whose school or child care provider has closed
or restricted in-person operations.

Narrowing of the Temporary Schedule Change Act

While the ESSTA amendments giveth, they also taketh away.
Starting Feb. 22, employers are no longer required to grant
employees’ temporary schedule change requests.

As of now, under the TSCA, employers are required to grant
employees two temporary schedule changes per year for
“personal events” such as caregiving for a minor child,
attending a legal proceeding or other reasons permitted under
ESSTA. Going forward, however, employees may ask for a temporary
schedule change and employers are prohibited from retaliating
against the employee for making the request, but employers are not
required to grant the request. Now, employers must only
respond to the employee – and either grant or deny the
request or propose an alternative – “as soon as
practicable.”

Next Steps for Employers

Although the amendments do not go into effect for a few months,
employers should start reviewing and revising current sick leave
and temporary schedule change policies and practices now to ensure
compliance with the amendments. A great time to do this is with
other employee handbook updates, which often take place around now.
Employers should also make sure that managers and human resources
personnel are aware of the expanded permissible uses for sick leave
and the changes to the TSCA so they can respond appropriately when
employees make leave or schedule change requests.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general
guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought
about your specific circumstances.