Categories
Antiwork

Boss tried to pay me 1/40th my wage for sick leave.

I'm in mobile, so please forgive spelling and grammar errors. A few years before Covid started, my state passed a sick leave bill, requiring every employer to give their employees sick leave. For every 40 hours worked, employees received 1 hour of sick leave. I had accrued 4-5 days of sick leave by the time I got the flu in late 2019. I was too sick to work, so I decided to call in and use my sick leave for the first time. I had been sick a few times, but I worked in an industry that's not a 9-5 job. It's basically commission based service industry job and we work when our clients need us. When I was sick before, there wasn't any work due to the time of year, so sick leave didn't apply. I ended up getting the flu during a time when I had 3 jobs…


I'm in mobile, so please forgive spelling and grammar errors.

A few years before Covid started, my state passed a sick leave bill, requiring every employer to give their employees sick leave. For every 40 hours worked, employees received 1 hour of sick leave. I had accrued 4-5 days of sick leave by the time I got the flu in late 2019. I was too sick to work, so I decided to call in and use my sick leave for the first time. I had been sick a few times, but I worked in an industry that's not a 9-5 job. It's basically commission based service industry job and we work when our clients need us. When I was sick before, there wasn't any work due to the time of year, so sick leave didn't apply.

I ended up getting the flu during a time when I had 3 jobs lined up. The way sick leave works for commission workers is they get paid for the time they were scheduled to work at an average rate of pay. My boss calculated my sick time and… said he was going to pay me $14 dollars.

I was shocked, as I was expecting 8 hours of sick leave pay at an average rate for the 3 missed jobs. I was pissed.

I crunched some numbers and found out that he was offering me 1/40th of my normal rate of pay, which is what he paid per hour we worked for sick leave into the sick leave fund. For example, if I made $50 per hour, he had to pay $1.25 into our sick leave fund.

I was finally able to convince him that by state law, he needed to pay me my hourly wage, not what he paid into sick leave for every hour I worked. I ended up getting a decent amount of money for being sick, but I had to listen to him bitch about sick leave and the libs forcing people out of business until I was laid off when Covid started.

I started a competing business and he went out of business at the end of last year.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.