STD Guidelines

What is the name of your state? Illinois

I work in Illinois and have been at my current job for almost 15 years. I have a wrist deformity and the job I perform is causing severe problems for my wrist. In the past three years I have had three different surgeries but the deformity will never be corrected. My physician will only allow me to work for approximately 5 hours a day and I am a full time employee and upper management wants me to apply for disability. The corporate disability person is telling me that our third party payor for disability will not pay for disability for 2-3 hours a day and they tell me I will have to go part-time. By doing this I will lose my benefits and cannot afford to do this. How can the company I work for do this? It is the job I do that is causing me to become disabled. Please if anyone could help me out with answers that would be great!

The corporate disability person is telling me that our third party payor for disability will not pay for disability for 2-3 hours a day and they tell me I will have to go part-time. I wouldn't imagine the person at corporate who is responsible for managing disability claims would steer you wrong. Many disability plans won't pay unless someone is totally disabled and unable to work AT ALL for a period of time. It appears yours will pay for partial disability.

By doing this I will lose my benefits and cannot afford to do this. How can the company I work for do this? Because they need someone to work full-time and you can't. You may be entitled to attribute those 2 - 3 daily hours you're missing to FMLA leave until you have used up all 480 hours of FMLA but that won't have any impact on your disability benefits because you'll be working too many hours to qualify.

FYI - your employer doesn't have to offer you part-time work at all. Once your FMLA is exhausted for the year, they can terminate your employment entirely.

It is the job I do that is causing me to become disabled. Then you should be pursuing this as a worker's compensation claim. You might qualify for vocational rehabilitation as the type of work you're presently performing you can no longer do.