USPS worker here. Similar situation on sick leave and annual leave. Except, I can roll forward 440 hours from year to year, and sell up to 40 hours at the beginning of the year to bring myself down to 440. Beyond that, annual leave disappears entirely. This is why if my balance exceeds 480 in December, I’ll seek out anybody who is in the program, and sign 40 hours over to them. And once I donated to a custodian on my tour who was recovering from a heart attack.
I haven’t seen any appeals from someone in a higher paygrade, so I’m not sure how that would work.
It seems rare. I’ve only ever heard of one person whose work had this scheme, the husband of a friend. She was outraged because he gave up all his sick time for years but had no volunteers when he was out due to a brain aneurysm that happened right there in the office. (He recovered completely).
Another thing to remember is that sometimes people deplete their vacation/sick time due to someone else in their family getting gravely sick - like a child or spouse. Then later something happens to them and they have no leave available. In cases like that it sure helps a person when their coworkers are able to and want to donate. At my work you’re only able to donate vacation time. Sick time donations are not allowed. I was talking to a colleague a while back after an e-mail went out to help someone out. She said that it would be helpful to know why exactly the person was requesting help. Meaning that if she knew the story behind it, it may prompt her to be more generous. I thought about this and concluded pretty quickly that I don’t need to know my coworker’s health issues; they are not my business. You either are capable and willing to donate, or you are not.
My wife and i both work at a university, and we have leave donation for people who are out for long periods of time, and who don’t have enough of their own leave to cover the absence. It is usually termed “Catastrophic Leave Donation.”
I know a bit about this, because my wife had to take advantage of it last year. Just before the semester started, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and had to have an operation, followed by four weeks of recuperation, then six weeks of daily radiation treatment. All of that combined was going to take up most of the semester.
Her own leave covered about eight weeks. At the end of that period, the university’s human resources people sent around an email to all campus faculty and employees, through the office of communication. I’ve received a bunch of these emails, for different people, since we started working there, and they all follow a similar format:
I’ve donated leave a couple of times. On a couple of other occasions, i’ve submitted the donation form, only to be told by Payroll that there have already been sufficient donations received, and that my donation is unnecessary.
We were given a chance to donate to a co-worker, many years back, when his wife fell ill with lung cancer. The company offered x days a week of paid time off that covered everything (vacation and sick leave) and while I don’t recall if there was a ceiling to that, there’s no way he could have accrued enough time to care for his wife. I donated a day.
The Federal government has an unlimited sick-leave accrual policy, but you can only accrue 2 weeks per year - and long-term disability doesn’t kick in for 3 months. So if you get a major illness your second year, you burn through your leave right away and then you’re screwed. I know that at least some agencies allow donation of leave but I think that may be a general process (i.e. you say “I’ll donate one day to the pool this year” without knowing to whom it will be given).
The pay-scale difference is certainly an issue but if the company chooses to allow it, they’re doing something nice that probably doesn’t cost them THAT much, and gets a fair bit of good will.
As far as knowing the reason, that might well affect my decision. At least, “blew through on mental health days” would make me less inclined to donate.
Federal employees can donate annual leave to cover sick leave. I’ve given 8 hours of vacation to someone in my office who had a terrible accident. She was the kind of person who had zero hours of sick leave saved after years of work, because she used it up as fast as she got it. Most older Federal employees I know have hundreds, if not thousands of hours saved. The Feds are very generous with sick leave and it can be saved forever.
She was a nice person and really, really needed the help so a bunch of us chipped in a couple of weeks.
It’s allowed, but I’ve only seen solicitations for vacation donations maybe three times in the 14 years I’ve been here. Each time it was someone I didn’t know in a different department. I think I donated once. After that I was saving up for inevitable knee surgery.
Like FairyChatMom, we accumulate sick leave with no cap and it gets added to our seniority at retirement. This made me check. I’ve got about 25 weeks banked. That counts out to about half a year. The next surgery is well covered. Can really use the pension years, though. It accrues at 12 hours a month, while vacation accrues at 8 hours a month.
Vacation days used to have no cap, but were capped a year or so ago at 280 hours. We can either use them at retirement or have them paid out. We used to be able to sell vacation back in 40 hours units, up to twice a year. Now that’s not allowed. Pity. It was handy around Christmas.
I haven’t been annoyed by any of the solicitations, here. Either they’re being vetted well or no one has tried to take advantage.
I thought I made it clear in the OP, but now I see I did not…
The call for donations comes from the co-workers, never from the company. The company only approves or denies, then facilitates the process (and keeps donations anonymous).
mmm
I have never worked somewhere where it was asked or even allowed. I am against the policy in general because I believe that sick leave should be only for the benefit of the truly sick and not simply be a more restricted form of vacation days. I don’t think that anyone should be able to accumulate them from year to year or even need to. It simply invites abuse from both sides. Longer-term illnesses from either the employee or a loved one can be dealt with through a combination of short-term and long-term disability insurance plus the Family Medical Leave Act as well as discretion on the part of the employer.
I have worked with people that have had some truly bad things happen to them including the loss of a child and medical conditions like cancer that required aggressive chemotherapy. In those cases, the employee just used up all of their acquired time at full-pay and then the company just gave them more at their discretion (usually about a month free at full pay). That is good policy for lots of reasons: it makes the company seem more fair and personal to everyone and it helps avoid dealing with the disability insurance companies because that isn’t cheap or easy in the long-term either.
Asking other employees to donate their sick time based on poorly thought out policy is the among the worst of all potential policies.
First. I agree with MMM’s position. I don’t see donations in general. I doubt anyone has enough sick days for a major illness, that is what disability is for. It is cheap to ask other people to make up for a lack of benefits.
I’ve never worked at a place with a sick leave entitlement. It has always been if you are sick take time off, with a doctor’s note if you are out long enough. At AT&T I had no sick time at all for lots of years, and never got anything except a gift certificate until they figured out that rewarding people for coming in sick was a bad idea. The one time I was out for a week due to an operation it cut over to a long term outage plan, but no issues at all. I think we have a sick leave policy here but no one pays much attention to it. Everyone works extra hours all the time, so no one cares if you take some time off to go to the doctor.
So I’ve never been in a place where anyone took mental health days from sick leave. If I need one, I take it from vacation. Most of us are bumping up close to the max accumulated leave (24 days) anyhow.
Also at AT&T we had vacation days and personal days. People working in factories had to schedule vacation days well in advance, the smaller number of personal days could be take with no advance warning. Since I worked in a research center there was no difference for me. Vacation days carried over and when I left I got paid for my unused ones, personal days did not and I had to take them before I left or lose them. Carryover vacation days had to be approved each year and there was strict limit on them.
I don’t know if the state of California as a whole does this, but the corrections department does, and the call goes out daily. We have about 1200 working just at my area, and that’s just one of dozens of prisons. The call doesn’t necessarily go out state-wide, but might go out to whatever prisons the person has worked at in the past, so it adds up fast. Peace officers <guards> are in it for the money, and are not inclined to use much of their time off. Overtime pays FAR too well to not take advantage of it, and there’s plenty of it. So you have a fairly close community with lots of spare time, balanced by daily requests, and it sorts itself out. I don’t know anyone who feels badly for not donating, as there’s just no way to do it all the time. At some point someone might come up who you know, and you know works hard, and you might donate. It’s all anonymous, and it shows how you’re viewed. If you work hard and have been there a long time, you likely will get help. If not, then not. Either way, the anonymity makes it easy to do what you want without guilt.
How does it work when S (the sick person) and D (the donor) aren’t paid at the same rate? If S is paid less than D, does S get a temporary pay rise for the period he’s off work? Or does S get paid at his normal rate, with the employer saving the difference?
And if S is paid more than D, does the employer make up the difference? Or does S just take a pay cut, grateful that he’s getting some income?
At my job, pay rate doesn’t matter. If I donate a day to S ,he or she gets their regular pay regardless of how much I make , in the same way that I get paid my usual rate when I take leave no matter how much i made when I earned that leave.