jury duty and no call in

Irie

An employee was out all last week on jury duty. The summons stated a minimum of five days' service. No problem because we knew he was going to be out. Today, Monday, the employee is a no call/no show. We expected him back at work today unless he contacted us to let us know he was on a case and would not be in. Our no-fault attendance policy requires an employee to advise us at least 15 minutes prior to their starting time if they will not be in.

Under the circumstances, would we be within our rights to penalize the employee per our policy, for not contacting us this morning? If he is still on jury duty we would not penalize him for not being at work, only that he did not notify us as he is required to do. Thanks.

Susan in La

Is it possible he is sequestered and can't make a call? Maybe they are in deliberations and he can't call. If he comes up with something like that, I wouldn't penalize him, but otherwise I would think your call in policy should have been followed.

sonny

Even if he was sequestered, I would think he could have a someone call for him. Just my thoughts

stilldazed

I think you'd be safe to prepare to penalize and also prepare to rescind the penalty if your worker gives you a plausible story on why there was no call in. It is true the worker may have been sequestered. It is also true that the worker may have asked a friend or relative to call in as a substitute, but there would be no guarantee that the friend/relative would have actually called, and I would think that there is no guarantee that a supervisor would have accepted the call in from someone other than the worker.

I also think that you may have enough info to confirm with the appropriate court house whether the case is still underway. After all, a 5-day commitment for a jury is long by some standards, so the case is probably being followed by local news media.

best wishes

sonny

I wasn't thinking of a friend or relative I was thinking of a deputy or LEO. .an official who was sequestered with the jury. . there is always someone.

ray a

Irie, what is your penalty for one day of not calling in? I would tend to do what Stilldazed said, be prepared to go either way once the employee returns to work. If they come back with documentation showing they were still involved in the trial, then I would not punish, or maybe at worst, give a verbal warning for not notifying you. If the extra time off is not related to the jury duty, then nail them.

Irie

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 04-29-08 AT 11:10AM (CST)[/font][br][br]As I stated in my original post, employees are required to advise us of an absence at least 15 minutes prior to their starting time. Based on the summons for jury duty we expected him back to work on Monday. If his service was required beyond last Friday he should have notified us of that fact Monday morning.

There will be no penalty for him not being at work if he is still on the jury. The penalty is a half of an attendance point for not notifying us that he would not be coming to work on Monday since we did expect him here.

If he cannot produce documentation that he was on a jury this week, more points would be given for an unexcused absence.

stilldazed

Regardless of who you might expect to make the call on behalf of your employee, your employee may have limited control over ensuring that the call was actually made if the call comes from anyone other than your employee. Of course, this may all be a moot point by this time if your worker is back or you have heard from the worker(?).

I can certainly appreciate where you're coming from with your point system, but as the devil's advocate for a moment, I would ask how you might be prepared to handle a response from your employee that included the employee's request from a court official to make the call and no way to know for sure whether the call was actually made. I am not a big supporter of exceptions to policy, but I do believe that there are situations that warrant exceptions, and civic duty responsibilities may be one of those areas. If, in fact, the worst case scenario comes to fruition, which is that the worker made every available attempt and was unsuccessful given the circumstances, I think you will have a very disgruntled worker on your hands. If I were the worker, I'd be very upset.

With all that said, you're worker may just be AWOL, decided to take an spontaneous vacation, could have jumped off a bridge, may be in a hospital somewhere with amnesia, . . ., etc. Who knows. I know some of those ideas may be a stretch, but reality can be quite interesting sometimes and much more unbelievable than fiction. If your worker has truly stiffed you with the call in, I'd nail him to the wall.

best wishes.

Irie

The employee returned to work today with documentation that he was on jury duty for the past two days. He said he "forgot" to call and let us know he was on a case. I know if I take this to the PTB they will tell me to let it go so that's what I will do. I will however let any future jurists know that they must call us if they will be on jury duty longer than the obligatory five days.

Thanks for all of your responses.