She’d be eligible if she is kept out of work for medical reasons.
I got a call back from the WCB advocate. She said that they can’t tell the employer to let her back before the results are in because the drug policy isn’t a worker’s comp issue (which we knew).
BUT she said that what the employer is doing is discrimination against the people who can’t afford to be out of work for 3 days (pretty much everyone not a manager). So, she said to tell my sister this:
Go to the doctor.
Go online and fill out the workman’s comp form and submit it.
Print out and mail in the discrimination claim form.
She will still have to wait for a determination to be made about whether or not it really is discrimination and she probably wont get reimbursed for the lost wages for a long time - or at all. BUT what it might do is set a precedent which will make it so her employer has to create a fair policy.
In this circumstance, I doubt my sister cares about future policy. I’m sure she’s more concerned with the fact that she needs to work and needs money. But, she currently owes me $300 and she said she’s going to pay it back this month. I’ll tell her that she can keep the $300 if she goes to the doctor. I know she makes over $100 per day but after taxes it’s probably not much more. Maybe that will help her to make the decision to go to the doctor. Hell, she can use a 3 day vacation.
She was told very specifically that she will be kept out of work for the 3 days that it takes for the drug test results to come back. She knows from past experience that it doesn’t always take 3 days but it can take up to that long. They could be back the same day. She wont know until she makes the decision to go to the doctor and by then, she will be out of work waiting for the results.
Oh, and I doubt she took a pic of the pothole. She doesn’t have a cell phone and she doesn’t usually carry a camera in her purse. I’ll recommend that when I talk to her.
Sounds like the company is covering their own ass. If she returns to work early, then trips on her way to the copy machine, complicating the injury, then the company has to pay for that. If her drug test comes back later that day as positive, then she would have been fired, and wouldn’t have tripped. Seems like a reasonable policy to me. The only fuzzy part is stating “three days,” instead of “until the drug test results come back.”
This is also why all those financial experts say to have three months of expenses in a savings account… so that a measly 3 days of missed work doesn’t throw you under the poverty line.
From my experience in H/R (a while back) three days is normal. It’s it actually more like the third day. If you get the test Monday they get it back on Wednesday.
YES YOU CAN get a quicker drug test, it costs a lot more. I was at a hotel and if a driver had an accident, they immediately had to take a drug test. THOSE DRUG TESTS came back in hours and cost the hotel about three times as much. I think the three day test was $19.00 and the well over $50.00.
So, wait, I don’t think I understand the American system. Worker’s comp is insurance for the employer that, for any injury at work, both those where the employer may have been negligent, and ones that are simply misfortune, both (a) immediate medical care and (b) compensation for being out of work?
And, in America, it’s up to the companies whether to offer sick pay or not, so many people, if they’re run over by a bus, simply don’t get paid?
So the questions are, firstly, if medical treatment had taken longer than overnight, if she’d have had any compensation while she was off work?
And, secondly, if it’s legal that anyone who takes advantage of – legally mandated – worker’s comp in order to receive medical treatment, may, even if medically able to work, be suspended, without pay or any kind of due process, for up to three days? Would it be legal if they suspended you for three months? It sure as hell doesn’t sound like it SHOULD be legal, but I’ve no idea if it IS.