Is it fair for a work place to use someone's paid time off for an injury?

[redirish28]

Okay:

Here's what happened. My wife started to work for a place which gave her 3 days of paid time off -whenever she wanted to use it - after 3 months of work. a while back during a shift she injured her arm. She pulled a muscle and therefore was unable to work with 1 of her clients who is a lift client.

She only worked with him 2 hours a week with him so while she is on restriction her work place took 2 hours of Paid Time Off each week. As a result she only has 8 hours of paid time off left.


Can work places do this or is this wrong?


It is in the employee handbook and when she showed it to me I figured they meant if she got injured while not working for the company and needed time off.

She works in PA.

[democracyindanger]

1. Looks like PA

doesn't require employers to provide paid sick days:

Am I entitled to Sick Leave? Vacation Pay? Severance Pay?

There is no Pennsylvania labor law which requires an employer to pay an employee not to work. Benefits like sick leave, vacation pay and severance pay are payments to an employee not to be at work. Therefore, an employer only has to pay these benefits if the employer has a policy to pay such benefits or a contract with you to pay these benefits.

http://www.dli.state.pa.us/landi/cwp/view.asp?a=142&Q=61106#8

She could probably ask that she just not be paid for those hours and preserve her paid time off, but it'd be the same difference. There's also the option of checking into a workers' comp claim since her injury happened on the job, but I have no idea how that sort of thing works.

[harmonicon]

2. sounds very fishy to me

At a job I had, a woman in another department hurt her arm and had a job where she had to lift things. It then became my job to go help her do that, not to dock her pay and have able-bodied me do it instead.