I started this job I'm at currently with an agreed upon 3 weeks PTO, which is pretty average. They had no terms for sick leave, and before it was sort of a “if you're sick stay home” type of thing, not taken out of any time pool which was cool. This change though, not cool at all and I'm wondering if it's a breech of contract (I'm on a 1 year contract to not quit, expiring late August), and now they're telling us, you have 1 week less PTO for 1 week more sick time, which essentially means we don't get our agreed upon vacation time, and must have perfect attendance in order to get what we were already promised. I think this is absolute bullshit. Curious what the community here thinks.
All,
I am writing to inform you of a change to your Schedule A. The change is we will have two separate buckets of time of starting July 1. Your time off will be divided between PTO and sick leave. Going forward your sick leave will be 40 hours per year and it will accrue per pay period just like PTO. The 40 hours of sick leave will deduct from your PTO. The combined total of PTO and sick leave will add up to the same amount of PTO you have now. By example if you had 160 of PTO on your schedule A you will now have 120 hours of PTO and 40 hours of sick leave. You will see a short amendment to your schedule A that reflects this change shortly.
Why are we doing this?
Some of the states that (redacted) now operates in require employers to have a separate sick leave time off policy. There are bills before several other states to do the same thing. When we provide employees with a hand book we like to cover all the bases that we can. We are putting out a new handbook on July 1.
For me this feels a little bit like back to the future. A number of years ago most companies had vacation and sick leave policies. Then to save administrative time and relieve companies of determining what was sick leave and what was vacation most employers just called it PTO (paid time off) and made it all on bucket of time. The thought being if you’re sick or taking vacation it does not really matter to the employers as you are not at work. Now it appears that in some states labor groups are lobbying to have sick leave back by saying that PTO does not include sick time and they must be separate policies. Hence, the ever changing employment laws are driving us back to where we came from originally.
You will see the updated schedule A in your inbox shortly. If you have questions please send an email to (redacted) and I.