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North Carolina working rules

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Roby

Guest
Need some advice about NC work rules as they pertain to termination. My wife has started a job as an Xray tech with a hospital that has a no fault occurence policy. Simply put you get an occurence everytime you call in sick for work, a total of 16. Now the quality and availability of day care on the East Coast is deplorable so everytime our son is sick she has to go pick him up, thus adding to her occurences.

Today she had a "talking" to by her supervisors and she was told she is their best tech, but in no uncertain terms if she reaches the 16 occurences she will be fired.

I am curious if it is legal to fire someone for having to leave work to care for a child?

Any help is appreciated.

ROB
 


Beth3

Senior Member
Yes, it is perfectly legal unless your wife's absences due to your son's illnesses fall under the FMLA (which they don't if these are just run-of-the-mill childhood ailments.)

So, dad, where are you when your son is too ill to stay in daycare and one of his parents need to collect him???? Your wife is going to get fired if she keeps leaving work when he's ill if you can't help out or alternative care for him can't be provided.
 
R

Roby

Guest
Well beth, thank you for the prompt answer, but not so thank you for the ignorant assumption of where Dad is.

Dad is an airline pilot and is gone 3-5 days in a row. The days Dad is home my son is home from daycare.

I today took my second occurence for calling in sick to stay home with my son so my wife could go to work.

ROB
 

cbg

I'm a Northern Girl
The short answer to your question is yes, it is, but there are qualifiers.

IF your wife's employer has more than 50 employees within a 75 mile radius AND IF she has worked for them for a minimum of 12 months AND IF she has worked a minimum of 1,250 hours in the last 12 months AND IF the child's illness reaches the definition of a "serious health condition" under the Family Medical Leave Act, then they must allow her a total of 12 weeks of leave (480 hours) before they can terminate her.

A cold, a stomach ache, a minor earache, etc., do NOT qualify as serious health conditions and do not trigger FMLA protection.

If EVEN ONE of the above qualifiers is not true, then FMLA protection does not exist and they can fire her as soon as she has reached the limit of whatever leave time is available under company policy.

Even if FMLA protection does exist, it is not open-ended and they can fire her when the protected leave is exhausted.

Somehow or other, the general public seems to have gotten the idea that illness, a doctor's note, being "on disability", pregnancy, etc. are all guaranteed protection against termination. None of the above is true. There are NO circumstances in which an employer is required to give open-ended leave for illness. It's only a question of whether there is any protected leave available and if so, how much. But illness or not, there is always going to come a time when the employer has the right to terminate.
 

Beth3

Senior Member
I didn't mean to offend but it's a legitimate question. There's still plenty of families where the child care rests exclusively on mom, especially when one of them is sick.

Glad to know you're an enlightened dad. :)

Is there a hospital or medical clinic in your area? Some of them offer "sick child" day care services for situations exactly such as yours. They're not cheap but it's better than losing a job.
 
R

Roby

Guest
Thank you both for your responses. Something doesn't quite sit right here. How is one supposed to raise a family AND support them financially if employers or free to fire willy nilly. I understand, believe me I understand, the importance of employee dependability, but employee dependability is long term. This recent string of "illness" is because it is his first time in daycare, so obviously he is going to get sick being expose for the first time.

I (we) don't want FMLA protection, frankly this is not what FMLA is for. What we are concerned about is an employer knowingly hiring someone with a young child, so they know the responsibilities and "risks" that come with hiring a parent, then punishing the parent for fullfilling those responsibilities.

An employer shoudln't be allowed play ignorant on one side of the game and then cry foul when the parent does what any other parent would do.

As far as secondary care, there is none, its the East Coast enough said. Even the daycare we have is of poor reliability. Kids get sick, its a fact of life, but this particular daycare calls if he looks cross eyed at the floor.

So basically my question is not so simple. Can an employer who knowingly hired an individual with a small child (thus the "risks" of such a hire are known) then put on un-realistic occurence policies that force the parents to choose between going to work or picking up a sick child from daycare.

I realize work rules are not meant to be fair just legal, but there seems to be some legal side to this.

ROB
 

cbg

I'm a Northern Girl
You can't have it both ways.

If the employer had refused to hire your wife based on the fact that you have a small child and she would be missing work due to illness, you'd be on this board complaining about THAT.

The employer has work he needs to get done. If your wife isn't there to do it, her co-workers have to. Is that fair? Why should THEY put in extra time because YOUR kid is sick?

Or maybe none of her co-workers will do it. Maybe it will wait for her to come in the next day and she'll have to stay overtime to finish it, and your kid will be waiting at daycare for her to pick him up. That's not an ideal situation either.

So why should the parents of small children get extra time off? People without kids, or whose kids are old enough to be left alone, have lives too.
 
R

Roby

Guest
We don't want it both ways, we simply want it fair both ways. I have heard this argument before about parents needing so called extra time off to care for children. It simply isn't true. People without kids call in sick from hangovers, not being able to make it to work, etc, just as much as parents need to call in sick to care for kids. The only problem here is that we have a young one who is getting used/immune to normal sniffles and of course it takes time. The employer is not being the least bit flexible. My wife has offered to work more hours when I'm home, to work extended shifts while day care is open.

Other employees have been granted special schedules yet my wife has not. There is a hostile attitude towards working parents in this country. We don't deserve special treatment, we deserve the same treatment.

Rob
 
R

Roby

Guest
cbg said:
You can't have it both ways.

If the employer had refused to hire your wife based on the fact that you have a small child and she would be missing work due to illness, you'd be on this board complaining about THAT.

No I wouldn't because we knew the risks and sacrifices we were getting into in having a child. Parenting is a privelage not a right. If this employer had not been willing to hire her because of having a child, then she wouldn't want to work for them, we move on. It's a simple idea, employees are just as important as the employeer. Why should the employer have more "protections" against hiring and firing.

When I get hired for a job I am expected to show up for work and do my job, its a know fact. When you hire parents the employer should share that same expectation. By hiring someone with kids you are not just hiring a grunt your hiring someones parent. Contrary to popular belief people don't work to better a company they work to support themselves and their families. Companies could take a lot of good advice looking at the SouthWest Airlines business model. It is remarkably simple, the employee is first and second, corporate profit is third, and customer satisfaction is fourth. Make the employee happy and your company will make money no matter what.

Rob
 

cbg

I'm a Northern Girl
You are getting the same treatment. Everyone, regardless of whether they have kids or not, gets the same amount of leave time. How they use that time is up to them. Giving you extra time because you have kids would be treating you differently.
 

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