I don't know if this is the right sub to ask this in but I'm pissed, and I don't know if this is normal or not. If there is somewhere else I could post this, please let me know. Edit to add: I'm in Ohio.
In April, I had my daughter. I had short term disability for six weeks and FMLA for twelve weeks. The first six weeks of FMLA (unpaid) runs at the same time as the six weeks of short term disability (paid at 60%). My “maternity leave” (in quotations since thats not actually what we have here at work) ended June 20, and I took the week of June 27 off with vacation. I was told I needed to mark my first week off (which started April 4 when I went in for induction) with vacation, and that would get “paid back” to me. During my leave, I made sure to check in with everyone and let them know my planned day back, kept up with the FMLA and the short term leave people (HR and The Hartford). I got a full paycheck, and I was like wait that's not supposed to happen. So I called and texted my HR rep three or four times over the course of two weeks before she finally got back to me and said it was fine, that's supposed to happen, it lines up with the short term leave pay schedule.
I must not have read this policy carefully enough before I left, but I went to log a sick day back in like, September, I think?, and I saw i had a zero balance of time off, sick days, and a floating holiday. Confused, I emailed my HR rep. No answer. Sent another email. No answer. Sent another, and called. No answer from either. Didn't even call me back.
We recently changed HR reps. So I emailed her and asked her the same thing, and I found out all of my sick time (five days), all of my vacation time (another week), and my floating holiday (one day) were all used to “supplement” the time off. And that's not time off I got to take. They just took it from me and used it.
Here's the actual wording of the policy:
- Family Medical Leave runs concurrently as any other leave of absence (short term disability). a. When Short Term Disability goes to 60%, the other 40% will be supplemented with any other available time off (vacation time, sick time, and/or floating holidays). 4. When taking FML unpaid, all available time off will run concurrently with FML (example: any unused vacation time, sick time, and/or floating holidays will be applied during any otherwise unpaid FML usage).
Is that normal? The company just….stealing my owed time off? What am I supposed to do the rest of the year if I need to take time off? What if I get super fucking sick and can't work? I CAN work from home, but even if I am that sick, I'm not going to be working. I technically already owe this company a day now because I couldn't log the sick day.
I want to know who wrote this policy because it's shitty. What if I were a single mother and my daughter got sick and I had to stay home with her? Like…there's so many things. I can't even take any damn time off for the holidays because i have none left to take. And we get shit for days off. We're going to get Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Eve, and the day after Christmas. So even if I wanted to do anything on any other day, i fucking can't now.
I'd been keeping my eye on the job emails I get just because I always do…but now they might get more interesting.