Policies for providing Florida employees paid sick leave are determined by each individual employer, if the employer decides to offer this benefit. Employers have this right, because they are not legally obligated to provide paid sick time at all. There is no Florida law that requires it. There is no federal law, either, that mandates companies pay workers for time off due to illness.

This fact is often a surprise to employees. Many workers feel that companies “owe” them this benefit.

The purpose of paid sick time is to provide income to employees when they are genuinely ill. There is a trend across the nation, however, for workers to pretend to be sick just because they want a day off from work. This time off is often referred to as taking a “mental health” day.

Due to this trend, companies will sometimes stop offering paid sick leave. Usually, the business will notify employees that as of a certain date, they will no longer be paid for time off due to illness. There are situations, though, where an employer will cancel this benefit without advance notice.

Canceling paid sick leave is completely legal, unless a union contract is in place that mandates this benefit.

Not giving warning may seem unfair, but the company is probably taking this action to save money. Consider that if a company announces that “In 3 months you will lose your 5 days of paid sick time”, every employee cold become “sick” for exactly 5 days before the program expires. By canceling without warning, the company avoids the expense of paying for workers to use that sick leave as additional vacation days.

There is a benefit program that provides a solution to the sick/vacation time problem. Many employers have adopted PTO, or paid time off, to provide paid leave. PTO does not separate leave into vacation or sick, it is simply paid leave. Employees may take this time off for any reason. With this program, workers no longer need to pretend to be sick to get a day off.

Last 10 posts by Tamara

• Religious Discrimination in Illinois - November 20th, 2009
• Intermittent FMLA in Connecticut - November 19th, 2009
• Massachusetts Short Term Disability - November 18th, 2009
• Muslim Prayer in Idaho - November 17th, 2009
• Disciplinary Notices in Florida - November 16th, 2009
• Religious Discrimination in New York - November 13th, 2009
• Intermittent FMLA in Colorado - November 12th, 2009
• Kansas Short Term Disability - November 11th, 2009
• Missouri Religious Discrimination - November 10th, 2009
• Federal Disciplinary Notices - November 9th, 2009

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 15th, 2009 at 5:28 am and is filed under Labor & Employment Laws, Short Term Disability 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.