April 2022: San Francisco Amends Family Friendly Workplace Ordinance

Update Applicable to:
All employers with 20 or more employees working in or telecommuting out of the city of San Francisco

What happened?
On March 14, 2022, the City of San Francisco passed amendments to its existing Family Friendly Workplace Ordinance (FFWO).

What are the details?
Beginning July 12, 2022, the amendments to the ordinance will go into effect and apply to employers with 20 or more employees, regardless of location.

Employees of covered employers are eligible if they are:

1. Employed in San Francisco, including those employees who telework from outside of San Francisco
2. Have been employed for six months or more by their current employer
3. Work at least eight hours per week on a regular basis

The new amendments will primarily expand the FFWO by:

• Requiring employers to provide predictable or flexible working arrangements except where it would create an undue hardship
• Requiring employers to engage in a good-faith interactive process to find predictable or flexible arrangements
• Including teleworking employees
• Expanding protected caregiving activities to include elderly family members other than parents
• Expanding penalty mechanisms for enforcement

Under the amendments, a covered employee will be allowed flexible or predictable work arrangements to care for any family member age 65 or older, rather than specifically a parent.

The amendments also increase some of the San Francisco’s Office of Labor Standards Enforcement’s ability to enforce the ordinance.

For more information, please see the links below:

Amendment to FFWO

Article 1 – Article 2

What do employers need to do?
Employers should review the links provided above and make adjustments to their FFWO policy with their employment counsel.