I work in a hospital, so they’re obviously quite strict when it comes to Covid, working sick, quarantining, etc. On NYE I went home with a fever and got a Covid test the next morning from one of the only pharmacies that was open on New Years Day. Long story short: the results were taking forever to come in and I stayed in contact with the employee health and disability offices (disability handles short-term leave) every day. By that Thursday my results still weren’t in yet but I was feeling fine, 48hr without a fever, asymptomatic, etc and I was pretty sure I didn’t have covid but despite all of that I still wasn’t allowed to come back to work until my results were in. Both offices promised me even though I was feeling fine and able to work, I’d still be paid quarantine pay since they were the ones telling me to stay at home.
Fast forward to the following week, my results come in on the 10th and were negative (surprise, surprise). I come back to work the following day and again check with both offices as well as my nursing supervisor to make sure there wasn’t anything else I needed to do in order to get paid, they all said I’m good. Payday rolls around and my check is barely a pittance. None of my quarantine hours are on there. I called the employee health office and they said I’d be getting a separate check since quarantine pay is calculated differently, ok cool, as long as I’m getting it. So I call the disability office to get a rough timeframe on when that check will pay out and they tell me there will be no check since I tested negative. This was a TOTAL one-eighty from what I was being told while on quarantine. Never once did they say that my pay was contingent on whether or not I tested positive for Covid, and it shouldn’t matter anyways since they were the ones telling me I can’t work, it wasn’t my decision at all. In fact I told them I was ready to come back by the 4th. The grievance I’m filing through my union is going nowhere and it even sounds like my rep is ready to chalk it up as a loss.
I have given half a decade to that hospital, a good half a decade. I busted my ass there, covered other people’s jobs as well as my own when we were short staffed, soldiered on through every shift of this goddamn pandemic without missing a step, spent the past two years breaking down in my car more times than I can count after 12+ hours shifts of death, massive overcrowding, and more stress than anyone person should have to deal with and I’ve never complained or said no to anyone. But now when it’s their time to step up, I get cast aside. I’m done, fuck that place… they dare to call us ‘heroes’ and then pull a stunt like this? They dare to ask so much and give so little? Correct me if I’m wrong, but withholding pay from someone who was involuntarily quarantined is illegal, right? And the worst part, the shit cherry on top of the fuck-you sundae is I’m not the only one this has happened to, far from it. What do I do?