No Sick Leave Policy

Red

We are a manufacturing company with no sick leave policy in our factories. (Our corporate office has a 5 day per year paid sick leave allowance.)One of our plant managers, a very good, long-term employee, has to have serious surgery and will be out 6 - 8 weeks. He asked me if we could make some sort of allowance for him to be paid while he is out.The company owner said no, fearing that we'd be in danger of accusations of discrimination if we offered it to him and no one else. Any suggestions?

Hatchetman

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 10-17-01 AT 04:42PM (CST)[/font][p]
In today's economic world, a company that doesn't offer some type of "paid sick leave" or health benefit coverage isn't going to get good candidates and very well may be open to unionization by disgruntled employees.

If you're company doesn't offer paid sick leave or other heatlh benefit coverage to its "troglodytes", alas, how unfortunate. I assume there is a state disability fund availabe to help cover the loss of pay.

Down_the_Middle

I think the company owner is right about creating precedents that you'll not want to live with in the future. About the time you make an exception for this plant manager, along comes "Mr. Smith" who expects the same thing and you'll be in an awkward position. You'll have no policy that governs what you did and your defense will be weakened. Seems to me either the company policy gets changed, or you tell the plant manager that there's no provision for him to receive sick pay at the present time. You don't mention whether LTD is avail to the PM, so it's hard to know how other components of your benefit package will apply.

System

I assume you're giving him unpaid FMLA leave. And, yes, there's a bit of a risk giving one employee a big benefit that others don't get. If you want to treat execs differently, it's safer to have a written policy spelling it out.

And I'm with Hatchetman -- I don't see how you get decent workers without sick leave. Where I work, we don't have a whole lot of PTO (vacation and sick combined). So every winter, a lot of employees come to work sick so they don't use up all their leave, and their germs spread through the rest of the building. It's crazy.

James Sokolowski
Senior Editor
M. Lee Smith Publishers