Leave Benefits Concern

[Tykimeister]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? Kansas

There has been a change in policy in my department for paying out leave benefits.

Old Way of Sick Leave Benefits:
-Work on 4 days, 8 hour shifts, 32 hours for the week. Used a sick day due to illness on the 5th day, 8 hours sick leave benefits. Total hours for the week 40.
-If you are assigned to work mandatory overtime (say 4 hours), you would be paid 36 hours for regular pay plus still get paid for 8 hours of paid sick leave. Your weekly total would then be 44 hours paid.
-No overtime would be paid, due to not physically being at work for more than 40 hours, but there never was a loss in sick leave benefits.

New Way of Sick Leave Benefits:
-Work on 4 days, 8 hour shifts, 32 hours for the week. Call in sick due to illness on the 5th day, 8 hours sick leave benefits. Total hours for the week 40.
-If you are assigned to work mandatory overtime (say 4 hours), you would be paid 36 hours of regular pay then lose your sick leave benefits. Only receiving 4 hours of sick leave benefits and the other 4 hours would turn in to hours without pay.

I know that the FLSA does not protect employees in regard to the benefits I'm talking about. But how can my employer give one employee 8 hours of sick leave benefits, for missing a day of work. But then give less sick leave benefits to another employee who used a sick day just like the previous person? It feels discriminating, to give less benefits to someone just because they were mandated to work mandatory overtime.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,

 

[cbg]

It may or may not be fair. I understand why you're upset. But it is legal. It is not illegal discrimination.

The law does not require that non-exempt employees be paid for sick time at all.

 

[Noobx04]

Two issues

The change in sick policy is the first issue. Being compensated for a sick day is strictly a benefit your employer is offering. It is not required to pay an employee while they are out on sick leave.

The second issue depends on exempt vs non-exempt. This just basically means that exempt is salary and no OT is offered. Non-exempt is typically an hourly wage and are required to be paid OT. It can be more complicating than that but I wont bore you with the details. If the benefit isnt being offered to the same status of employee, then it could be dicrimination. That being said, there has to evidence and documentation to prove this. Good luck

 

[cbg]

And since the above poster clearly does not understand the difference between exempt and non-exempt, or what is and is not illegal discrimination, I'm not quite sure what their purpose was in posting.