KALAMAZOO COUNTY, MI (WKZO AM/FM) — The Kalamazoo County Board of Commissioners has approved the development of a policy that will allow for additional paid sick leave in the event of a large-scale outbreak.
During a meeting Wednesday, March 4, commissioners discussed the policy that would allow county employers to send sick employees home with pay.
As written, the policy would allow the County Administrator to declare “healthy workplace cautionary period” in the event of, or the potentiality of, an outbreak of illness or disease.
“Department heads, elected officials, [and] court administrators shall monitor and coordinate actions, and implement measures which safeguard the welfare of its employees and residents while maintaining operations in an effective and efficient manner,” Commissioner Seals read. “Such measures may include, but are not limited to, designating certain positions as critical, essential, non-essential or non-critical.”
If such a period were to be declared, county employees could use up to 80 hours of paid leave for the duration of the period.
County Administrator Tracie Moored spoke at length of the policy, saying there may be some scenarios where employees must stay at home for health reasons.
“Right now, we have a situation where we have many employees that are sick,” Moored said. “We have certain situations where employees are forced to come to work because they either do not have banks of leave time to stay home, or they are our most dedicated employees.”
Moored recognized that there was no policy in place to keep sick employees at home when necessary.
“Some people have to choose coming to work and not being paid,” Moored said. “Right now, given the severity of some of the call-ins or not call-ins, we have departments that are down significantly because that is continuing to spread.”
Moored added she would be meeting with department heads to discuss all procedures implemented in this policy.
Commissioner Christine Morse raised questions regarding how this policy would differentiate between a large-scale situation versus the average person being sick in the workplace. The policy would be implemented in the event of a large-scale sickness.
The amount of flu cases reported, plus the spread of the coronavirus, is partially what spurred this policy development (although there are currently no reported cases in Michigan).
“The basic cold that goes around, or the few people that have the flu, that’s one thing,” Moored said. “Although this is not unique, this is one of the times where we’ve had to sit down and say, ‘we might actually have to have the ability to tell people, please stay home.’”
Any time taken off would come from the 80 hours of paid sick leave and would not impact standard sick or vacation hours. The cautionary period length would be set at the discretion of the Administrator.
Not all positions would qualify for the period, however.
“In this designation, we will have essential functions, some positions will have to come in,” Moored clarified. “If it’s snow plowing and we don’t have enough snow plowers, they have to come in. If it’s payroll day, we have to get that done. We are designating critical, essential and non-essential functions. We have a lot of those that are already designated, but I think we need to review those again, specifically under this instance, and who might be able to work from home if they’re sick.”
Board Chair Julie Rogers was pleased with the idea of the policy.
“I think we’re being leaders, I’m not aware of any other municipality that has done this to date, so I hope that other municipality that has done this to date,” Rogers said. “I hope that other municipalities and other governments consider doing this, as well as other workplaces like KVCC and Western Michigan University.”
Ultimately, the policy was unanimously passed by the Board Commissioners.
Moored will now plan to meet with other department officials to fine-tune the procedures of the policy.
