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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Aug 2016
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    1

    Question Can Your Employer Require Medical Documentation for Sick Time

    My question involves labor and employment law for the state of: Texas
    I work for a large city in Texas. My department heads have instituted a policy that say if you use your earned Sick leave for x-amount of hours, you must provide documentation that states you were under a doctor's care. This policy was put into effect because some were abusing their Sick leave. Let me reiterate that Sick leave (along with Family, Vacation, and Holiday leaves) are earned by the employee at a given amount per pay period. To my knowledge, no other department in the city requires their employees to submit documentation to prove legitimate use of sick leave. The documents are submitted to a specific medical records clerk and stored in a file in her office. If you fail to turn in documentation after using the permitted amount of hours, you are banned from working voluntary overtime, which is a substantial hit to the paycheck. Essentially, my department is penalizing us for using a benefit we earned.

    In my situation I was off injured. I filled out the documentation and put it into the intra-department mail delivery. Somehow it didn't get delivered so they levied the penalty against me. I'm working on getting it resolved.

    Can they make us submit to such a policy when the leave used is what we earned? Is it discriminatory that they make this rule for us when the rest of the city employees don't follow it?
    Thanks.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Dec 2009
    Location
    Lake Chapala
    Posts
    3,043

    Default Re: Sick Leave Policy - Requiring Documentation

    Yes this policy is legal. While it may be discriminatory by not making other departments follow the same policy, it is not illegally so.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Jun 2006
    Location
    Massachusetts
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    24,521

    Default Re: Sick Leave Policy - Requiring Documentation

    I'm going to add one qualifier. The policy is legal UNLESS the time is attributable to FMLA AND there has been previous documentation submitted within the last 30 days.

    It's a shame that employees who have not abused the sick time policy have to pay for the errors of others, but it is what it is. It's quite legal for different departments within the same company to have different requirements.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Oct 2006
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    16,474

    Default Re: Sick Leave Policy - Requiring Documentation

    Quote Quoting cbg
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    I'm going to add one qualifier. The policy is legal UNLESS the time is attributable to FMLA AND there has been previous documentation submitted within the last 30 days.

    It's a shame that employees who have not abused the sick time policy have to pay for the errors of others, but it is what it is. It's quite legal for different departments within the same company to have different requirements.
    How does one abuse it? If they earn say .5 days per month of sick leave, and they use sick leave averaging .5 days per month, how is that abuse? Now, if they are taking more sick leave than they have earned, that would be abuse, but otherwise I am confused.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Jul 2010
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    8,006

    Default Re: Sick Leave Policy - Requiring Documentation

    Quote Quoting llworking
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    How does one abuse it? If they earn say .5 days per month of sick leave, and they use sick leave averaging .5 days per month, how is that abuse? Now, if they are taking more sick leave than they have earned, that would be abuse, but otherwise I am confused.
    Most often by taking it when they are not sick, in place of regular time off.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Dec 2009
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    Default Re: Sick Leave Policy - Requiring Documentation

    Quote Quoting free9man
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    Most often by taking it when they are not sick, in place of regular time off.
    Ditto.

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Jun 2006
    Location
    Massachusetts
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    Default Re: Sick Leave Policy - Requiring Documentation

    Obviously llworking has never managed paid time off for employees.

    If they earn .5 days a month, and they take off .5 days a month regardless of whether they are sick or not, you don't think that's abuse? Sick time is there for one purpose and one purpose only; to keep them whole when they must miss work due to illness. It is not there to be used as supplemental vacation time. Yet many employees use it that way anyway. And when they do, in order to maintain the fiction that they are ill it is almost always last minute, leaving someone to have to scramble to find coverage, call someone in on their day off, or leave a gap in the day's work. Frequently such time is on Monday's, Friday's, or the day before/after a holiday.

    Oh yes, sick time gets abused. Don't ever let anyone tell you otherwise. And short of calling someone a liar, there's little an employer can do about it until it gets chronic. (There are things an employer can do once a pattern develops - it's while the pattern is developing that their hands are tied.) This is one of the few things they can do.

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Mar 2012
    Posts
    1,360

    Default Re: Sick Leave Policy - Requiring Documentation

    Where I worked and where my stepmom worked (two different places) had similar policies. However at about the same time, they stopped doing it and said it was because of HIPAA.

    Could there have been any truth to this?

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Apr 2009
    Location
    Somewhere near Canada
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    35,894

    Default Re: Sick Leave Policy - Requiring Documentation

    Quote Quoting chyvan
    View Post
    Where I worked and where my stepmom worked (two different places) had similar policies. However at about the same time, they stopped doing it and said it was because of HIPAA.

    Could there have been any truth to this?
    "Because of HIPAA" tells us nothing at all. Can you expand on that?

    (I have an idea, but I'd like clarification first).

    Edit: I'm asking whether they actually implied that they couldn't because of something relating to HIPAA, versus they are no longer going to because ... "well, no real reason at all so we'll just say HIPAA because it sounds all official and stuff"

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Jun 2006
    Location
    Massachusetts
    Posts
    24,521

    Default Re: Sick Leave Policy - Requiring Documentation

    HIPAA is an extremely misunderstood law. The possibility exists that they truly thought such a policy was a violation of HIPAA. If so, they were wrong. (I have just this past week completed my annual training regarding HIPAA issues in the work place.)

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