OT- My employer's new attendance policy!!

[Wi-Mom]

I'm a single Mom with three children. I work for one of the largest healthcare corporations in the world, and they have issued the most unfair attendance guidelines....

Employees are given 8 paid sick days per year. (It was reduced this year from 15 to 8)

Here is the new rule for sick time taken:

---Non FMLA sick days will be considered unexcused and will be held against employees for purposes of absenteeism.

---FMLA absences will not be held against employees for purposes of absenteeism.

---The sick pay policy is a "pay" policy and does not provide for an employee to be absent from work.

---A doctor's note substantiates the absences, but does not excuse it.

---Employees will be expected to use personal or vacation time for all preplanned appointments non-FMLA related.



So what this means is that yesterday, I called into work because my son had an ear infection and I had to take him to the doctor. I got a note from the Dr.. but regardless of the note my absence was unexcused and though they will pay me for the day, I can also be fired for having taken it.

It did not qualify as FMLA.. so I am now vulnerable for termination. This would also include if I am sick and must stay home for any reason.

I work for a healthcare corporation and they have now made it a policy that their employees are not entitled to their own healthcare.

I cannot find anything on the internet that says this is not legal.  As a single mom... I'm really screwed!  Anybody got any other knowledge about parents rights to take time for medical care for themselves and their children?

[MixedBag]

Human Resources by education......and I read this earlier and now again.

Really don't know what to say.

My first thought was to contact your union steward if that would apply.  

My next thought was to ask how the "company" could make these changes and stuff....

Trying to think which branch of Uncle Sam would be keeping an eye on stuff like this....just don't know.

Careful about saying "I'm a single mom!!!" too much, because their new policy really effect parents in general.  Yep, you don't have another person to help you out, but they didn't do this to single moms, they did this to their employees.

Wonder if your state has an "Industrial Relations" Department like ours does???  That you could talk to???

[ivehadit]

The policy they have initiated is actually one a lot of larger compaines are taking up to keep the less than honest employees from taking advantage of "sick days" when they aren't sick.

Unfortunately, most of the people that take advantage of the sick days are those who don't have families - so you are basically getting screwed because non-parents took one too many days in the past few years off to nurse hangovers - and the company lost out in productivity and probable profit as a result.

The nutshell is there is nothing illegal about the policy.

[Wi-Mom]

You know I stayed up late the other night for hours trying to find any kind of law that allows a person to leave work to care for themselves or a child due to illness... Suddenly, there it was.. exactly that. I started to print it off.. and realized I was on a UK website! dang!

US.. nada, exept FMLA and that is only for chronic or continuous illnesses that will have you out of work 3 days or more.

Everyone here is in a panic.. and all plan to work sick and contagious. I hope the company will provide us with surgical masks but I doubt it.

[Wi-Mom]

You are absolutely right. We've been hearing a lot about the attendance issues. The crazy thing is they started after our department hired a company to re-organize us.. and they did a terrible ridiculous job. We paid this company for their services by laying off several employees (so we could afford it) and suddenly all of us were absolutely stressed and overwhelmed with more work than we could handle. It's been a nightmare.

This resulted in a sudden increase of sick time and rather than fixing the problems they created and removing some of the stress, they're cracking down on us for it. We had 15 sick days all these years.. and now we get 8. I realize both of those are fairly generous, but for a company this big it's not unusual.

It's interesting that I'm not noticing any difference in the frequency of people calling in sick in my department.

[emih]

<>

Actually, the new policy impacts EVERYONE.

[emih]

>Unfortunately, most of the people that take advantage of the
>sick days are those who don't have families - so you are
>basically getting screwed because non-parents took one too
>many days in the past few years off to nurse hangovers - and
>the company lost out in productivity and probable profit as a
>result.


First of all, I take offense at the assumption that those of us who do not have children, and even those of use who are *gasp* single do not have families. I find it sort of offensive to be told I don't have a family because I don't have kids. And non-parents do not have a monopoly on taking advantage of the system and irresponsible behavior. I have been taken advantage of far more often to cover (often for rather trivial things like games) by parents than by single coworkers.

I found this topic while searching for information on issues with attendance policies, problems getting sick-leave and other necessary leave in the workplace. This sort of thing affects EVERYONE.