Does your employer take away your vacation if you go out on disability?

dclpluto

DIS Veteran
Joined
May 11, 2012
Messages
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Does your employer take away your vacation when you go out on disability? My employer just started this year taking away our vacation if we go out on disability. Luck has it I have never been on disability and the year they start it might have to go out for a knee surgery. Example I get 208 hours of vacation a year. That comes out to exactly 4 hours a week. So every week I’m out 4 hours of vacation is taking away from me. Nothing I can do about it just wondering. Never heard of it before from anywhere.
 
From what I’ve seen, if you are on intermittent fmla, they can use your PTO for that missing time so you can get paid. If you are taking disability/fmla in one chunk, then what happens is there’s usually a week long or sometimes longer waiting period before disability can kick in, and this is usually covered with your PTO.
Since disability is a percentage of your pay, in order to bring it up to 100% pay, your company may have you top it off with your PTO. This is usually optional.
 
From what I’ve seen, if you are on intermittent fmla, they can use your PTO for that missing time so you can get paid. If you are taking disability/fmla in one chunk, then what happens is there’s usually a week long or sometimes longer waiting period before disability can kick in, and this is usually covered with your PTO.

This is what my company does. I've never heard of a situation where PTO is taken from you in increments like you are referring to. That stinks.

Do you have to use PTO as well to cover the waiting period before disability kicks in?
 

It’s sounds like vacation time is accrued for the OP (x hours of vacation for y hours worked). I guess the argument is that, since the person on disability isn’t working, they aren’t accruing.


Ah, yes. Never thought about that. Makes sense.

Ours accrue for your first year on the job. After that, you get it all on Jan 1.
 
We do not take PTO when someone is on disability. They can choose to supplement their pay with PTO but they are not required and they are also not required to use PTO during the one week waiting period before disability kicks in. They do not accrue PTO while out on disability which seems as though that is what is happening in this case.
 
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OP, are you given 208 hours at the beginning of the year or do you accrue it throughout? If it is given to you, I can see where it is definitely "taking" PTO away from you. If it is accrued, then no. I also earn about 208 hours of PTO per year. If I were to go out on disability, I would not earn leave during those time periods. You can only earn leave when you submit a timecard that consists of 8 hours per day of "work" or PTO. If I go LWOP for an entire pay period, I don't earn PTO.
 
Yes. Our vacation isn’t deposited as an annual “lump”, it is accrued daily and only accrues during days actually worked. It’s not taken away, per se, the accrual clock just stops ticking. Our workplace does continue to consider you employed for seniority purposes during leaves though.
 
I think I had to use 5 sick days before STD kicked in. But you better not mess with my vacation days!!!
 
Think this was written into my teamsters contract & they drew down in it early on as I went through the FMLA, which I used as a buffer as I sorted out the rest of the disability paperwork. Hope you feel better.
 
vacation is not accrued if you are not working. Your thread title is misleading. it doesn't sound like your earned vacation time is being "taken away".

where I work, disability is paid (if you buy into the short term disability insurance) after you've missed 1 week of work. That first week off comes out of the accrued vacation time or is unpaid if you don't have time in your bank. After 12 weeks of short term disability (paid by the insurance company, not your employer), you will transition to long term disability (which is a different insurance policy). Long term disability requires quite a bit of paperwork and the insurance company requires continuing documentation of the disability status.

There is no vacation time accrued during the time that you are off work.

Whatever you are facing, I hope it is short lived and you can return to your baseline. Disability is disruptive.
 
It’s sounds like vacation time is accrued for the OP (x hours of vacation for y hours worked). I guess the argument is that, since the person on disability isn’t working, they aren’t accruing.
That's the way my company works. We don't accrue vacation days when we don't work; sick days, any type of leave, even when we're taking vacation days.
 
I get 10 days per year at the start of the school year, and if I have to be out on disability they don't take/decrease what they give me. However, my job doesn't qualify for state disability. I have private disability insurance, but they require I use all my PTO before it kicks in.
 
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I think state laws also are a factor. We are automatically put on short term disability after 5 days. Our sick time, holiday time (holidays are not days off for us) and vacation all go into a pool of PTO time. Hope never to find out.
The short term disability system seems to work okay, it's when you have a major illness and get put on long term disability that it can get messy. You have the long term disability insurer, the short term disability insurer, the employee, the employee's Doctor and the employer all with different view points on whether the employee can return to work. At my wife's work it is usually the employer balking at the employee returning to work. That usually ends up in court and is resolved with a settlement of some sort and the employee not returning to work
 
It’s sounds like vacation time is accrued for the OP (x hours of vacation for y hours worked). I guess the argument is that, since the person on disability isn’t working, they aren’t accruing.

It’s not hours of vacation for hours worked. It goes by how long you have been with the company. Doesn’t matter if you work a lot of overtime or not.
 
vacation is not accrued if you are not working. Your thread title is misleading. it doesn't sound like your earned vacation time is being "taken away".

where I work, disability is paid (if you buy into the short term disability insurance) after you've missed 1 week of work. That first week off comes out of the accrued vacation time or is unpaid if you don't have time in your bank. After 12 weeks of short term disability (paid by the insurance company, not your employer), you will transition to long term disability (which is a different insurance policy). Long term disability requires quite a bit of paperwork and the insurance company requires continuing documentation of the disability status.

There is no vacation time accrued during the time that you are off work.

Whatever you are facing, I hope it is short lived and you can return to your baseline. Disability is disruptive.

how is the title of my thread misleading? I asked a question. This is the first year they are doing this in the over 100 years they have been open. Well at least for 57 years since my dad worked there for 47 years and been retired for 10 years and they never took the vacation away from you when you went out on disability.
 
I never took disability. But our company would tell us if we don't use the vacation time we lose it. No carry over.
 

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