EE no call, no show, but was in detox...

Squishypig

We have an employee who left work early Monday, was a no call, no show for both Tuesday and Wednesday. The manager just received a call today that the employee voluntarily checked himself into detox (for alcohol)and could be back at work tomorrow. We have had problems with this EE in the past (late, no call, no show, etc.) but the managers are lax on documentation. From what I understand, he could be covered under ADA and we can make accomodations for him but we would like to discipline him for not calling or showing up to work (which put a strain on our food production facility). According to our attendance policy, the first no call, no show gets a report in their file, the second no call, no show we consider that the employee has voluntarily resigned and we terminate. But since his absence was due to detox, we are hesitant to terminate. We are requiring that he provide us with proof that he was in detox before he starts back to work. We would like to suspend him for a week for being absent for 2 days and not telling us, we could care less where he was. Is there anything we need to be careful of?

PS- We do not have an EAP.

Johnette
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Don D

The ADA prohibits your discrimination against completers of programs who are now straight or taking action based on program completion. This does not roll down to prohibiting you from following your no call-no show policy. The ADA doesn't suggest that you must ignore or waive policies and procedures for such an employee, only that you should consider granting reasonable accomodations. I would view a reasonable accomodation in such cases as allowing an employee to return after lunch a little late if he is attending regular 12 step programs.

Aside from this guy thinking he can benefit from a 2-3 day detox program, he should know that you are going to enforce your policies. He could have called in, he could have arranged the absence in advance. My guess is he retreated into the safe harbor of a 3 day stay at the facility in avoidance of some consequence that he saw headed through the tunnel right at him.

I would cut him no slack based on the facts you cite.

LindaS

Agree with Don.