§ 7-210 Employer's Sale of Business or Transfer of Employees.
RCNY § 7-210
(a)Business sales, transfers in corporate ownership, or changes in subcontracting relationships between corporate entities shall not impact employees' safe/sick time balances. When such changes occur, an employee will retain and may use all accrued safe/sick time if the employee continues to perform work within the City of New York for the successor employer or contractor. Failure to properly transfer an employee's accrued safe/sick time to a successor employer constitutes a policy or practice of not providing or refusing to allow the use of accrued safe/sick time in violation of § 20-913 of the Administrative Code. The original and successor employer and any joint employer(s) are individually and jointly liable for the satisfaction of all penalties and employee relief imposed for the violation of § 20-913, regardless of any agreement between the original and successor employer to the contrary. Example: Company A is in the business of operating a call center in Brooklyn. Company B, a staffing agency, provides Company A with workers to answer its phones. The phone operators are nominally employees of Company B. After one year of answering Company A's phones as an employee of Company B, a phone operator is informed that Company A has shifted its business to Company C, and so her nominal employer will now be Company C. Her job duties and the location of her work do not change. The phone operator's accrued safe/sick time must be transferred to Company C. If this does not occur, Company A, Company B, and Company C are jointly and severally liable for the violation of § 20-913 of the Administrative Code.
(b)If the successor employer falls within a smaller employer size threshold from the former employer, the employee is entitled to use and be compensated for unused safe/sick time accrued while working for the former employer, until such safe/sick time is exhausted. Example: Fast Food LLC is a franchisee of a national fast food chain with 500 employees in New York City. Fast Food LLC frontloads employees with 56 hours of safe/sick time per calendar year. Quick Pizza LLC, a new company seeking to enter the fast food franchising market in Brooklyn, acquires a subset of Fast Food LLC's locations in August 2021. After the acquisition, Quick Pizza LLC has 80 employees. Jimmy, an employee at one of the acquired locations, had used 46 hours of safe/sick time in 2021 prior to the transfer. He is entitled to use and be compensated for 10 hours of safe/sick time he had remaining in his safe/sick time balance at the time of the transfer. If Jimmy does not use any of the 10 hours of his remaining safe/sick time at the end of the calendar year, his employer must allow him to carry the unused hours over to the next calendar year pursuant to § 20-913(h) of the Administrative Code.
(c)A successor employer must provide employees with its written safe/sick time policies at the time of sale or acquisition, or as soon as practicable thereafter, which shall include a policy that complies with this section. (Amended City Record 2/3/2016, eff. 3/4/2016; amended City Record 8/21/2018, eff. 9/20/2018; amended City Record 9/15/2023, eff. 10/15/2023)
