What happens to my employment if I can't work?

Q How do things work from a job status, pay, and benefits point of view if we become ill or injured and can't work?



A Since I worked on this issue with one team member recently, I thought I'd dedicate my first blog posting to this subject!



Situation: Mary Blog has been employed full time by ACPL for 2 years, had worked more than 1250 hours during the previous 12 months, and was seriously injured in a car accident. She has now been off work for 4 months and it is unknown when she'll be able to return to work. Let's take a look at how Mary's job status, pay, and benefits have been impacted by her absence from work.



Job Status: Mary applied for a leave under the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) policy, submitted the required documentation from her doctor, and was approved for the leave - all within the first couple weeks she was off.



Although the FMLA law generally requires employers to return a person to the job they held (or an equivalent job) if they return to work within 12 weeks, ACPL extends this period by an additional 12 weeks. So Mary's job is "protected" for 24 weeks following her absence. The employment of team members is terminated if they are not able to return to work within 24 weeks.



Pay: Mary had two weeks of vacation and a week of accrued sick pay when the accident occurred. So the first three weeks were paid for Mary using this accrued time she had in her "bank". When Mary had not returned after three weeks, ACPL's short term disability policy took over and paid Mary 70% of her regular monthly earnings thru the first 90 days of her absence. (ACPL's short term disability program is only available to eligible employees who have been with ACPL for at least a year when their leave begins - at no cost to team members! However, similar coverage can be purchased from AFLAC thru ACPL for those new team members who are interested.) When it began to look like Mary would not be able to return to work within 90 days, she worked with Human Resources to apply for Long Term Disability pay and her application was approved. LTD pays 60%

of regular monthly pay. The LTD pay will continue until Mary is able to return to work.



Benefits: ACPL's payment of health, dental, and vision insurance for Mary ended when she reached 90 days off the job. She elected to continue cobverage (called COBRA) by paying the full cost of the coverage (as opposed to the normal share team members contribute).



So, bottom line, Mary has about two more months to return to work while her job is being "held" for her. After that she would be applying to be re-employed rather than returning from medical leave. Her 60% pay thru LTD is continuing and her benefits are still in force due to Mary paying the full cost of the insurance.



(To satisfy our lawyer friends, we need to remind you that the above is a summary of some of our ACPL policies. For the details, you should review the policies on ACPL's intranet site or the actual insurance policies where relevent.)



HR is interested in team members' thoughts and questions about this issue - and anything else you have on your mind. Just fire away those questions via this blog and we'll do our best to answer promptly. (If it is going to take some time to research an answer, we'll post that and give a target date when the response will be posted on this blog.)



We look forward to receiving and responding to your postings!



Peter Ford

ACPL HR Manager

pford@acpl.info



P.S. I'll try to make future answers alot shorter!