Many Wisconsin employees wonder about their paid sick leave. Is there a state law that requires employers to give workers a specific number of days of paid sick time?

The answer is no. There is no Wisconsin law mandating the number of sick days a company is required to provide its employees. In fact, there is no law mandating paid sick days at all. Federal law doesn’t require paid sick time, either. Providing this benefit is strictly the choice of the individual employer.

There are ten states, though, where employers are legally obligate to pay workers for their accrued vacation time at termination. No laws exist in any states, however, that require the same for accrued sick leave. Even California, which has the toughest labor laws in the country, doesn’t mandate pay for accrued sick leave upon termination.

Employees are often surprised to find that employers are not legally obligated to provide paid sick leave. Many workers expect this benefit and feel the company “owes” it to them.

The majority of employers do offer paid sick leave as an employee benefit. They have the right to determine the number of days provided, and the procedure for taking sick leave. Once they offer the benefit, they can change it or cancel it at any time.

Employers will sometimes cancel paid sick leave as a benefit, because employees are abusing the privilege. Across the country, workers use their sick leave, when they aren’t sick, simply to take a day off. By revoking paid sick leave, the employer avoids paying employees using this leave as another vacation day.

Many companies have adopted a paid leave plan that negates sick leave being used as vacation. Paid Time Off (PTO) does not separate leave into vacation and sick, it simply provides employee with a certain amount of paid time off. The worker can use these days for any reason whatsoever. No more pretending to be sick to take a break from the job.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 at 5:30 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.