DPW Management Overraches; Violates Member's Sick-Leave Rights: By Blaine Meek, Counsel

CAPE has long recognized the importance of Sick Leave Benefits to our members and has prioritized the improvement of these benefits and enforcing your rights to them.

I, as the Chair of the Coalition of County Unions, per the direction of your Board of Directors, have pursued this priority of improving your Sick Leave Benefits by leading the Coalition in addressing these benefits in our dealings with the County.

During fringe benefit negotiations with the County a few years ago, CAPE proposed and the Coalition successfully achieved allowing you to use the entire amount of your annual full pay Sick Leave Benefit (96 hours) as either Personal Leave or for regular Sick Leave.

When the County approached the Coalition regarding its new County-wide Policy addressing the subject of “Managing Sick Leave” in early 2011, CAPE again led the Coalition to successfully include in this new Policy a broad definition of when Personal Leave may be used. Personal Leave usage was defined as follows:

“… Any leave, taken for personal reasons, which does not interfere with the public service mission of the department. Prior supervisory approval must be obtained by the employee before he/she can use Sick Leave as Personal Leave, unless the need to use Sick Leave as Personal Leave arose due to an unforeseen situation or other emergency.” “Personal Leave may also be used to care for a spouse (including a domestic partner), child, or parent who is ill. In this case, prior supervisory approval may not always be feasible, but it should be obtained when the need to give care is anticipated.”

CAPE also led the Coalition to successfully include in this new Policy a broad definition of when regular Sick Leave at full pay may be used — consistent with what the Unions fought for in the State Legislature passing the California Kin Care law — to include an absence resulting from not only your injury, illness, disability, or pregnancy including childbirth or related medical condition, but also the illness or injury of a child, parent, spouse or domestic partner as well.

Yet despite the clear definitions above, Departmental Management, Human Resources representatives, and sometimes even supervisors under pressure from your Management and/or Human Resources will ignore your rights to these Sick Leave Benefits and impose restrictions. When Management takes such arbitrary action in violation of our members’ rights, CAPE aggressively pursues enforcing your rights and removing such restrictions.

This recently happened to a CAPE member when his supervisor in a memo to him advised him that his sick leave was to be used only when he was not able to work because of illness, and that his using his sick leave for anything other than his own illness was not permitted. Upon being timely notified of this arbitrary restriction of his Sick Leave Benefits, CAPE aggressively pursued the member’s grievance and successfully removed the restrictions on his Benefits.

Please be aware of these hard-fought Sick Leave Benefit rights you have, and make sure that neither you nor your fellow CAPE-represented employees have them abused by your management in imposing such restrictions. CAPE is here to serve you!