Nevada employees have two questions about short term disability. Can a worker be terminated while on short term disability? Can a worker go on short term disability more than once a year?

The answers to both of these questions depend on the terms of the short term disability plan.

Short term disability is essentially private insurance, which provides money to employees when they are unable to work. The amount and duration of money varies depending on the benefits of the specific plan. For information about these plans, employees should consult their HR department, read the insurance booklet or contact the insurance company directly.

Generally speaking, though, it is possible to be terminated while on disability. Short term disability benefits do not guarantee the employee will keep his or her job. If a worker has to miss a lot of time, the employer is usually within its rights to let that worker go.

 As for being on disability more than once a year, the majority of short term disability plans offer payments for 13 to 26 weeks per year. If an employee has been gone 8 weeks, then he or she could have 5 to 18 weeks of available coverage.

Another consideration is whether the employer has counted the leave as FMLA (Family and Medical Leave Act). Companies can’t count short term disability as FMLA leave unless the worker is notified in writing prior to taking leave. If that employee’s company is counting the 8 weeks of leave as FMLA, then the worker has 4 more weeks available.

FMLA (Family and Medical Leave Act) is a federal law which provides employees up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave every 12 months. When the worker returns to the job, the employer must provide him or her with the same job, or one comparable in pay, benefits and working conditions.

If the leave wasn’t counted as FMLA leave, the employee still has those 12 weeks of leave available.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 14th, 2009 at 5:21 am and is filed under Labor & Employment Laws, Pregnancy Laws. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.