Is the LEGAL!?!? I've received a company email stating the following...Is it legal for the company to do this?

Question

Dear All,

For the sake of simplicity and easier to administrate, we have decided to combine the 2 sick days and 3 personal day (including 1 floating day) to become 5 personal/sick days per employee per year effective 1/1/06.

Please refer to the attached PDF file for number of personal/sick day eligible according to your date of employment.

Please note that personal/sick days do not carry over if unused.

Sorry I didn't make the question more clear...I was referring to the phrase..."Please note that personal/sick days do not carry over if unused."

Does the law allow for them to do this?

btw...our company is in CA. Since the laws are different between states, I thought it might be helpful to know.

Answer 1

Yes. Many companies have this type of program and its usually called PTO (Paid Time Off). It is also a very common and legal practice for companies not to carry over the days you don't use. There is nothing in the Fair Labor Standards Act that prevents this. The upside is that you can take time off without explanation rather than calling in sick just to really have a vacation day. However, are you sure you want to work for a company that only gives 5 days off per year?

(paralegal)

Answer 2

First of all, if the effective date is 1/1/06 it means this email is from 2005... I'm guessing it's a mute point by now.

But second, this is actually a better deal for the employees. Before they only had TWO sick days... now they can use all 5 as sick days. If you never used your sick days before.. you now can use them as two extra personal days off. They work the same either way and you're not losing any money. This was probably brought around by people not using their all their time.. or people running out of sick time and letting personal time sit there. Now the company can force you to use all 5 of those days for being sick. If you think this was a bad idea, than you're probably one of the people that they were targeting. :)

Answer 3

Unless this violates a contract you signed theny yes it is legal. The idea is if you are not happy with your benifits you can find another position somewhere else that is more agreeable. Please note there is really no affect to you other than you are allowed more freedom to use these days. In you old system you were give 2 sick days and 3 personal days where as now you have 5 total days to use for sick or personal days as you see fit.

Answer 4

Use them at the end of the year.

Don't get in a sweat over this. The way I read it, they are combining sick days and personal leave days into one package. That means you have five days you can take off, without needing a doctor's excuse. Just don't waste them early in the year, you might get sick toward the end of the year.

If you can not accumulate the unused days, you can always take them around Christmas.

Answer 5

Yes that is legal. They have eliminated a benefit you used to have called "paid sick time" You just lost an important benefit. Now you have to decide if you want to keep working there.

Companies who eliminate paid sick time create a financial incentive for people to come into work when they are sick (if they stay home when sick they lose a vaction day.) You may want to recommend to your employer that they rethink this policy.

Answer 6

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Answer 7

Why wouldn't it be legal? And why does it bother you? They're not taking any days away, they're just combining the two. My company does the same thing.

Answer 8

what difference does it make? you still have 5 days off.. they're just costing it to one account now and summarizing the name of it?

if it's a 'sick day' or a 'personal day' ... it's still a day off, it just comes from one bank of time instead of two.

Answer 9

i've seen it done. i think it's a good thing- you can use your days however you want. it's not good that they don't carry over tho.