The title basically speaks for itself. My boyfriend and I were exposed by a friend on a Friday, and weren’t informed until Sunday night. We called into our job on Monday informing them that we were exposed and that we planned to provide our negative tests to return to work the next day.
Nope. Apparently since our vaccines weren’t “up to date” (nobody’s is at our job, and there are still people who are unvaccinated) we were forced to take a 5-day quarantine; without pay.
Here’s the kicker. Our coworker was exposed when their mom got COVID, but when they provided a negative test they were allowed to return to work the next day. Their vaccine was not up to date. Nor were they asked if their vaccine was up to date.
This is not the only instance of this double standard. It has since happened to two other employees who were exposed, but were also allowed to return to work the day after providing negative tests. They also were not asked to provide an up to date vaccine.
When we looked up COVID labor laws in our state it said we qualified for paid leave. However when we brought this information to HR they claimed that the COVID labor laws are no longer applicable (even though the website had no expiration). They also told us they had to put us on leave due to OSHA regulations. Yet, none of the other employees who were exposed were held to those “regulations”.
We plan to make a call to the Department of Labor soon, but we have both gone over a week without pay already. They aren’t even required to pay us for our regular hours, yet they continue to dick us around knowing they have more than enough resources for our paid leave.
EDIT:
Looks like we legally have no teeth in this issue as COVID laws in our state are indeed expired. As for the double standards in our workplace, it seems like they will continue as our employer will not face any consequences for it. That’s what this sub is all about I guess; fuck these companies.