Instituiting revisions to a Policy retroactively in PA

lrenoll

We recently revised our sick time policy for non-exempt employees. We released the policy Feb 1 with a retroactive date of Jan 1. An employee started baulking about it (just so happens this person is an abuser of sick time)and said the PA department of labor prohibits retroactive policies. I can not find anything anywhere to that effect. Can someone please enlighten me if this is true or not? Thanks.

Terry

While I do not know where to point in legal documents for the answer, from a logical standpoint, if you terminated an employee for not complying with a policy he knew nothing about, potentially you would lose on an UI claim. Why was the policy made retro in the first place?

Mutagawa

I don't know PA laws specifically, but I think it would be very hard to defend any disciplinary action or termination that was based on a change in policy that was not communicated to employees before the change took effect.