Opinion ID: 1801969
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Defendants' Sickness Absence and Attendance Management Policies

Text: Section 5.01F of the CBA requires that employees be compensated for any day in which they miss work due to their own illness or injury for up to five consecutive days of absence in any seven-day period. [2] Once an employee returns to work following any period of absence, section 5.01F may again be triggered if the employee is absent for his or her own illness or injury. There is no bank of paid sick days that employees incrementally accrue over a period of time. There is no cap on the number of days employees may be absent from work under section 5.01F, nor is there a particular number of days that employees vest, earn, or accrue under the sickness absence policy. As defendants explain, if an employee normally works a five-day schedule from Monday-Friday, is absent for an entire workweek due to an illness, returns to work the following Monday morning, and becomes ill during the day on Monday, the employee can leave work and be absent for five more continuous working days with full pay. The parties stipulated that defendants never maintained a policy or practice of paying employees under section 5.01F of the CBA for absences to care for ill family members, nor has plaintiffs' union ever asserted that section 5.01F covers absences for the illness of an employee's family member. The CBA also contains an attendance management policy, which sets forth a schedule of progressive discipline that can be imposed when an employee is not meeting attendance standards. An employee is not meeting standards if he or she has eight or more absences in a 12-month period with no extenuating circumstances, or if an employee has more than four full days of absence and three or more occurrences of absences in a 12-month period with no extenuating circumstances. The attendance policy sets forth a progressive discipline scheme. If an employee fails to meet attendance standards, the employee is first counseled that further instances of absenteeism will result in discipline. If the employee has worked for the company for between five and 20 years, the progressive discipline policy mandates the following course for each successive absence: a written warning of a one-day unpaid suspension, a one-day unpaid suspension with a written warning of a two-day unpaid suspension, a two-day unpaid suspension with a written warning of termination, and termination. Employees with fewer than five years of service do not receive a two-day suspension, and are instead terminated after a one-day suspension and warning of termination. Absences are excluded from this attendance management policy (and exempt from discipline) if they constitute protected leave under, among other laws, workers' compensation laws or the federal Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (29 U.S.C. § 2601 et seq.). The CBA provides employees with six personal days off per year, and absences taken as personal days are also excluded from the attendance management policy. Absences for an employee's illness, while compensated pursuant to section 5.01F of the CBA, nonetheless constitute an absence potentially subject to discipline within the meaning of the attendance policy.