NYC Releases Guidance and Mandatory Notice of Employee Rights as Unpaid Sick Leave Takes Effect and Enforcement Ramps Up Under Earned Safe and Sick Time Act

On February 19, 2026, the New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) issued an updated set of Frequently Asked Questions, as well as an updated Notice of Employee Rights that must be distributed to employees regularly working in New York City. These updates address the new unpaid sick leave and new covered uses for sick leave that took effect on February 22, 2026, pursuant to amendments to the New York City Earned Safe and Sick Time Act.

The updated FAQs track some of the newly proposed rules issued by the DCWP, which the public may comment on during a scheduled March 2, 2026 public hearing. Importantly, several questions that were initially unanswered have been addressed, including:

• Whether part-time employees and/or mid-year hires must be provided the full 32 hours of unpaid sick leave at the beginning of the year (They must).
• Whether employers can provide 32 hours of additional paid sick leave in lieu of providing unpaid sick leave (They may, provided the 32 hours of paid leave are immediately available for use on employees’ first day of employment and on the first day of each calendar year).
• When employees can use protected time “to provide care to [a] minor child or care recipient” (It includes school holidays, day care closures, and babysitter cancellations).
• In what increments of time unpaid sick leave may be taken (The same as paid sick leave, i.e., a maximum four-hour initial increment, provided it is reasonable under the circumstances, and in 30-minute or smaller increments thereafter).

Additionally, the guidance document Rules for Protected Time Off Policies largely mirrors the proposed rules by requiring an employer’s written policy to communicate the amount of newly required unpaid leave, whether that time will be paid or unpaid, and to state that it will be available at the beginning of employment and each year. Additionally, for policies like PTO that might use terminology other than sick and/or safe time and/or protected time off, DCWP requires the policy to include the following language: “Such leave may be used by an employee for any of the purposes set forth in NYC’s Protected Time Off Law and its rules” (the proposed rules set for public comment, however, do not require this language verbatim, but words to this effect if a term other than “protected time off,” “safe/sick time,” or “safe and sick time” is used in an employer’s policy).

The updated Notice of Employee Rights is available in English and 27 other languages. The landing page for the Notice indicates that employers must provide the Notice in the employee’s primary language and “post the notice in the workplace in an area that is visible and accessible to employees in English and in any other languages employees in that workplace speak.” (The FAQs provide more specifics: “Employees have a right to be given a Notice in English and, if available on the DCWP website, their primary language … Employers must post the Notice in English and in any language spoken as a primary language by at least 5% of employees at the workplace if translations are available on the DCWP website.”). For those existing employees who had already received an earlier version of the Notice that did not discuss employee rights to unpaid sick leave, the DCWP’s website says the updated Notice must be provided and posted.

Notably, on February 20, 2026, the DCWP also issued “compliance warnings” to some 56,000 New York City employers and announced a new “data-driven enforcement strategy” to enforce the amended law. This enforcement strategy relies on a new DCWP report comparing the rate of paid sick time use in a given employer’s workforce with national sick leave use data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s annual National Health Interview Survey (NHIS). Using that data, DCWP’s position is that employer records that show unusually low rates of paid sick time use will be treated as “strong evidence of potential violations” and the DCWP will immediately pursue enforcement action. The new strategy indicates the possibility of enforcement action against an employer even when there have been no complaints that the employer failed to provide required sick time or denied leave requests. Instead, enforcement action will purportedly be triggered by rates of a workplace’s sick time usage that lags behind the national use rate. DCWP’s position appears to be in tension with its guidance stating that whether to use paid sick time is solely the employee’s choice (Per the FAQs: “The Law prohibits employers from deducting from an employee’s leave bank when the employee does not wish to use protected time off to cover an absence”) – and assumes that a covered employee’s need and desire for leave is consistent with national data. For employers complying with the Act using a combined paid leave bank like PTO, DCWP’s aggressive “data-driven enforcement initiative” underscores the importance of accurately tracking both sick and non-sick time usage.

New York City employers should review their implementation plans and employee-facing policies, and consult with counsel on how to navigate their unpaid sick leave requirements as well as how best to update and enable existing sick leave programs to withstand DCWP scrutiny.