Sick leave and FMLA+
Updated: Apr 8, 2020
Dear Caregiver and CNAs, We would like to thank you for your continued dedication to our clients during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your steadfast commitment has undoubtedly made a difference in the lives of our clients and their families. Your work is critical to sustaining our clients’ health and wellbeing and you play an indispensable role in keeping our clients out of the hospital. Your work is particularly indispensable at such a crucial time when hospitals across the country are struggling to keep up with public need. Your work is also essential to our ability to maintain minimum basic operations and to provide care for our clients who depend upon the professional dedication of our employees, especially during this challenging time. The Department of Labor, and many state and local governments, have recognized the importance of your role during the COVID-19 crisis and considers those who work in home care as health care personnel who serve essential roles in combatting the COVID-19 public health emergency. This means that these authorities recognize the importance of your work and want to support you—and others in similar roles—to continue to be able to come to work and carry out your important job duties. As a result, your position is exempt from the newly enacted Families First Coronavirus Relief Act (FFCRA) that you may have heard about. Effective April 1, the FFCRA applies to private employers with less than 500 employees and provides emergency paid sick time (EPSL) and emergency Family and Medical Leave Act (EFMLA) benefits to employees who are unable to work due to specific reasons related to COVID-19. However, FFCRA does not require that employees who are health care providers or emergency responders, or who work for similar types of companies, receive these benefits. What this means for you is that, because the work we do and the care you provide is essential, and a key part of our fight against COVID-19 our communities need us to continue to care for our clients now more than ever. Indeed, we have many clients in need of your care and have work for you to perform now and for the foreseeable future. We ask that you continue your demonstrated commitment to clients and our company by continuing to report to work, serve our clients, and keep our communities healthy and safe. As our staff will continue to serve on the frontline of this crisis, your role as caregiver has become more globally significant than ever before. That said, your health and wellness continue to be of utmost importance. As we have previously communicated, we ask you to monitor yourself and your clients for symptoms of COVID-19, we ask that you report the same, and stay home if you are ill. As a general reminder, we provide the paid time off benefits for those that have met the qualifications. This may be used as needed during the pandemic. In addition to our normal PTO policy, in an effort to help support our caregivers and minimize the spread of the virus associated with COVID-19, we have elected to extend Emergency Paid Sick Leave (EPSL) and Emergency Family and Medical Leave (EFML) benefits to you for certain absences related to COVID-19. The attached poster explains the basics of the Emergency Paid Sick Leave available. Contact the office for information on how to access this leave and the amount of leave available to you. Our goal in deciding not to exclude you from EPSL and EFML, but rather, electing to extend these additional leave benefits to you, is to help you in being able to continue to provide important care to our clients while also staying healthy and safe. If you should have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact Barbara or Tara in Engagement. Thank you Cris
Thank you,
Cris