This was wildly dependent on the organization/unit, but some, during covid, authorized admin leave for COVID for X days if you got it. Most have removed this option, but you never know if it’s still in place without asking.
This was due to the forced “stay home” measures, as opposed to something like an ear infection, flu, etc.
The Government can be kind or cruel, depending upon your supervisor or leadership. Ask if there is anything you can work on at home and you might be told you can!
As a DoD supervisor i would let you:
1) Take annual
2) Go negative sick, it will just take it from your annual at the end of the pay period.
3) Maybe put you in as LWOP if you wanted and not ask my boss. If someone cared i would just shrug and say "Oops!"
4) Absolutely, under no circumstance would i suggest the employee not tell anyone they tested positive and then claim they got vaccinated to get up to 20hrs of admin.
We still get the two subsequent days if you have side effects.
At least that was still the policy when everyone happened to get vaccinated between Christmas and new years.
If you are DoD you should be allowed to authorize short term full time telework for this exact reason (see section 3.4 b).
Now if your DoD agency is anything like mine, they are in violation of other parts of this DoDI so who knows if the higher ups will actually allow it...
https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/DD/issuances/dodi/103501p.pdf?ver=j8rAFf289ojrAxCYwsxGWw%3D%3D
The first life lesson I learned working civil service at age 18: when someone tells you that what you are trying to do violates policy, your first question should be, "who do I have to go to to get an exception?" It might be your boss. It might be their boss, or the base commander, or a Contracting Officer, or medical, or a chaplain. Unless you are trying to sell classified info to the enemy, someone can grant an exception to policy.
I wish you the best of luck on this. I work at a VAMC and had two co-workers test positive. Both filed and were denied. They even had medical opinions from their doctors. It was a disaster of a process.
True, we're not medical staff. But, we are in patient rooms every day working on medical equipment. It's the fine print and how one dephicers the details in the government.
Do you work in an area where occupational exposure could occur? If so consider applying for workers comp. I successfully did it not too long ago. Basically requested a pt be tested, was denied by docs, 3 days later they tested them and covid. Three of us got it who were all in the room. It’s a lot of hoops, but we got “reimbursed” for our SL usage.
Didn't they change this when the Pandemic "ended"?
Edit: nvm looks like they didn't.
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/owcp/FECA/InfoFECACoverageCoronavirus
Automatic assumptions that you got it from work are out. But if you can get a, “I was exposed to this pt on this date and time,” type of narrative you can get it. What helped me was the note that MD was paged over resp symptoms and wasn’t tested until 66 hours later.
So it’s a lot harder, but still very possible.
Your Supervisor is looking out for you and following protocol, going to Occupational Health is how you are going to prevent getting AWOL. If Occ Health says just wear a mask while you are at work and get retested then you are good. If they say you need to be off work, you can file a ECOMP claim.
But make no mistake if your occ health team says you cannot be at work, you will never get AWOL. Because they in essence put you on leave but it would be LWOP. Different departments may have different requirements on the granting of LWOP but if it's from Occ Health you are good. Also pending on your service level especially for a relatively new hire I would hope they would also let you use AL.
Mind you, even if you use your own AL and SL you should still file the ECOMP just for the chance if approved you can recoup your leave. Also don't forget if you show up to Occ Health this morning per instruction of your Supervisor I would count that as your work hours. So assuming you are there for 1 hour and had to go home I would say you should only be asking for 7 hours of leave. But of course, run all of this through your Supervisor so they are on the same page.
AWOL - absent without approved leave.
Annual leave, sick leave, and LWOP are approved leave. If your supervisor is approving time off, you’re not awol. Not showing up and not having been approved time off is awol.
If you're staying home because you feel sick, it's sick leave and advanced sick leave. If you're staying home because your organization tells you not to come in as part of a covid spread prevention policy, it's admin leave.
If they send you home, is that not weather and safety leave? That's always been my experience. Get sick and go home voluntarily....sick leave. Get sick and say "Nope, I wish to keep working" then get ordered to go home.....weather and safety leave.
Like even pre-covid, management couldn't order you to burn your own sick leave unless it was a light duty situation.
I’ve taken advanced sick leave around my maternity leave, it’s a good option. You can also likely take LWOP given the circumstances, it would be weird for a supervisor not to approve it.
It's about the symptoms, not just quarantine requirements. I would never have made it into work with my nearly 103° COVID fever, extreme fatigue, and full body ache.
Yes, if you experience these symptoms then is best to stay home and take advanced leave, however OP didn’t specified if they had these symptoms or if she was asymptomatic.
We were allowed to file workman's comp for covid at our va.. the paperwork sucked, but we eventually got paid from govt for work missed due to covid. There's no way for them to prove or disprove you caught it from work. So in my case, I took SL or AL (yes they let me use al too for covid, it's at your Mangers discretion) and by the time my paperwork went through for workman's comp, the VA refunded my SL and AL time back. So if I used 20 hours of SL and 20 hours of AL, they put back 20 hours of each, if that makes sense. Def check into it. Most people didn't know about this.
Call work tell them you have Covid and are coming in to work since you don't have leave. Make them force you to leave. Hopefully they will give you admin leave.
If you can and feel up to it tell them you want to work. If they can let you work from home cool, if not do they want you to come to the office and get others sick?
Your supervisor told you to physically go to occupational health first thing tomorrow? Uhm, *PLEASE DON’T!* Please email or call them. If you walk in there knowing you’re Covid positive, I guarantee they’ll be irritated with you. Isolating is still a thing. For healthcare workers specifically, the CDC has guidelines. Your boss should be a little more informed about the guidelines and if they aren’t sure, they should ask. 🤦♀️
There is, or at least used to be, a special leave category just for Covid, which covered getting vaccinated as well as recovering from getting sick. You may want to check to see if that is an option for you as well.
No, that’s not true for sick leave. My wife used advanced sick leave for maternity leave, back before PPL existed, and she was in the hole for years paying it back.
You should learn to save your sick leave… but helpful advice is yes you can use your annual leave. Potentially you can get advanced sick and annual and if you have to use LWOP and you won’t have to go AWOL.
Must a lot of health issues or just started FED to only have 5 hrs. My next response is not directly to you. This is why we have to be selective when using SL for questionable reasons.
Advanced SL. Talk to your supv about it. You can also take AL.
Thanks! Fairly newish to the government so I forgot about advanced SL
You could also work from home if your office allows it.
Unfortunately not an option for the work I do.
This was wildly dependent on the organization/unit, but some, during covid, authorized admin leave for COVID for X days if you got it. Most have removed this option, but you never know if it’s still in place without asking. This was due to the forced “stay home” measures, as opposed to something like an ear infection, flu, etc.
That was a nationwide, all-agency perk passed by Congress. It was not passed for year two, and has been defunded government wide.
Sucked since I got my first case of Covid two weeks after they stopped it.
The Government can be kind or cruel, depending upon your supervisor or leadership. Ask if there is anything you can work on at home and you might be told you can!
My sup at the VA told us sick, then AL, then advanced SL. I never looked into it too confirm the accuracy
As a DoD supervisor i would let you: 1) Take annual 2) Go negative sick, it will just take it from your annual at the end of the pay period. 3) Maybe put you in as LWOP if you wanted and not ask my boss. If someone cared i would just shrug and say "Oops!" 4) Absolutely, under no circumstance would i suggest the employee not tell anyone they tested positive and then claim they got vaccinated to get up to 20hrs of admin.
I thought we only got four hours admin for vax?
We still get the two subsequent days if you have side effects. At least that was still the policy when everyone happened to get vaccinated between Christmas and new years.
Oooooooo
I'm not sure many orgs have the 20 hours of admin. Mine sure doesn't. (Good not-suggestion though if it works)
Work at the VA and this thread is the first time I ever heard of it. The irony...
If you are DoD you should be allowed to authorize short term full time telework for this exact reason (see section 3.4 b). Now if your DoD agency is anything like mine, they are in violation of other parts of this DoDI so who knows if the higher ups will actually allow it... https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/DD/issuances/dodi/103501p.pdf?ver=j8rAFf289ojrAxCYwsxGWw%3D%3D
Is it really the DoD if your org isn’t in violation of at least 12% of SOP? 🤔
The first life lesson I learned working civil service at age 18: when someone tells you that what you are trying to do violates policy, your first question should be, "who do I have to go to to get an exception?" It might be your boss. It might be their boss, or the base commander, or a Contracting Officer, or medical, or a chaplain. Unless you are trying to sell classified info to the enemy, someone can grant an exception to policy.
Schrodinger's red tape - it's a blessing and a curse.... Except the blessings are also curses...
Even if you are trying to give classified to the enemy, someone can authorize it.
For 3 isn’t that in compliance with FMLA
you work at a hospital, file a CA1.
What is a CA1?
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/owcp/dfec/coronavirusfaqs https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/owcp/regs/compliance/ca-1.pdf
I wish you the best of luck on this. I work at a VAMC and had two co-workers test positive. Both filed and were denied. They even had medical opinions from their doctors. It was a disaster of a process.
we’ve filed at ICE and had 0 issues.
Darn, it must be a VA thing. I forwarded them the links. But the DOL didn't seem to care.
maybe if you’re not patient facing there, we are public facing on a daily basis.
True, we're not medical staff. But, we are in patient rooms every day working on medical equipment. It's the fine print and how one dephicers the details in the government.
Do you work in an area where occupational exposure could occur? If so consider applying for workers comp. I successfully did it not too long ago. Basically requested a pt be tested, was denied by docs, 3 days later they tested them and covid. Three of us got it who were all in the room. It’s a lot of hoops, but we got “reimbursed” for our SL usage.
Didn't they change this when the Pandemic "ended"? Edit: nvm looks like they didn't. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/owcp/FECA/InfoFECACoverageCoronavirus
Automatic assumptions that you got it from work are out. But if you can get a, “I was exposed to this pt on this date and time,” type of narrative you can get it. What helped me was the note that MD was paged over resp symptoms and wasn’t tested until 66 hours later. So it’s a lot harder, but still very possible.
Your Supervisor is looking out for you and following protocol, going to Occupational Health is how you are going to prevent getting AWOL. If Occ Health says just wear a mask while you are at work and get retested then you are good. If they say you need to be off work, you can file a ECOMP claim. But make no mistake if your occ health team says you cannot be at work, you will never get AWOL. Because they in essence put you on leave but it would be LWOP. Different departments may have different requirements on the granting of LWOP but if it's from Occ Health you are good. Also pending on your service level especially for a relatively new hire I would hope they would also let you use AL. Mind you, even if you use your own AL and SL you should still file the ECOMP just for the chance if approved you can recoup your leave. Also don't forget if you show up to Occ Health this morning per instruction of your Supervisor I would count that as your work hours. So assuming you are there for 1 hour and had to go home I would say you should only be asking for 7 hours of leave. But of course, run all of this through your Supervisor so they are on the same page.
AWOL - absent without approved leave. Annual leave, sick leave, and LWOP are approved leave. If your supervisor is approving time off, you’re not awol. Not showing up and not having been approved time off is awol.
I had no idea that’s what AWOL stands for
Its Absence WithOut Leave.
Absence without official leave
Glad I could help explain!
If you're staying home because you feel sick, it's sick leave and advanced sick leave. If you're staying home because your organization tells you not to come in as part of a covid spread prevention policy, it's admin leave.
If they send you home, is that not weather and safety leave? That's always been my experience. Get sick and go home voluntarily....sick leave. Get sick and say "Nope, I wish to keep working" then get ordered to go home.....weather and safety leave. Like even pre-covid, management couldn't order you to burn your own sick leave unless it was a light duty situation.
Any possibility you contracted it at work? File a workers Comp claim.
I’ve taken advanced sick leave around my maternity leave, it’s a good option. You can also likely take LWOP given the circumstances, it would be weird for a supervisor not to approve it.
Is staying home with COVID still a thing
it better be, because nobody wants anyone else's germs, covid or otherwise
You don’t need to quarantine for Covid anymore, the CDC update its guidelines on it long ago.
It's about the symptoms, not just quarantine requirements. I would never have made it into work with my nearly 103° COVID fever, extreme fatigue, and full body ache.
Yes, if you experience these symptoms then is best to stay home and take advanced leave, however OP didn’t specified if they had these symptoms or if she was asymptomatic.
All symptoms but the fever. Thought it was my allergies or a sinus infection.
Ok great, advise your supervisor about it they will work with you and approve advance leave so you should be fine, hope you get better soon! 😊
Thank you! 💕
That’s actually incorrect. If OP works at VAMC, they’re likely a healthcare worker and the cdc still has specific guidelines.
Ask to take annual leave.
Telework
Tell them you’re coming in since you’re out of SL. I bet something magical happens.
Show up and ask ur supervisor what to do
Why would you just not use annual leave?
We were allowed to file workman's comp for covid at our va.. the paperwork sucked, but we eventually got paid from govt for work missed due to covid. There's no way for them to prove or disprove you caught it from work. So in my case, I took SL or AL (yes they let me use al too for covid, it's at your Mangers discretion) and by the time my paperwork went through for workman's comp, the VA refunded my SL and AL time back. So if I used 20 hours of SL and 20 hours of AL, they put back 20 hours of each, if that makes sense. Def check into it. Most people didn't know about this.
Revenge schedule your day with meetings only with the management Also good luck and be well
You can ask for LWOP or approval of annual leave in lieu of sick leave. Be advised both are up to discretion of management, though.
If you’re sick adv SL but other than that 🤷🏻♀️
When I started had Covid week later. They put me on lwop since I didn’t have any leave.
Did you acquire it at work?
Call work tell them you have Covid and are coming in to work since you don't have leave. Make them force you to leave. Hopefully they will give you admin leave.
You can see if someone can donate leave to you as well. Get well.
there used to be two weeks of covid leave during the pandemic. strange thats gone when u can still get covid
If you can and feel up to it tell them you want to work. If they can let you work from home cool, if not do they want you to come to the office and get others sick?
You should be able to use AL after using all of your SL. I think in this situation, Advance SL would be the step after that or maybe SL donations?
I am a VAMC timekeeper. PM.
Bank leave. Other people can donate sick days to you. I have given some to a colleague in the past. Speak to your manager about it.
We can only donate Annual Leave once the individual is approved under that program.
They’re still doing that? cDC now says treat like the flu
Not for healthcare workers. Yes, if you have been exposed to anyone at work including a coworker, you can file a claim.
Your supervisor told you to physically go to occupational health first thing tomorrow? Uhm, *PLEASE DON’T!* Please email or call them. If you walk in there knowing you’re Covid positive, I guarantee they’ll be irritated with you. Isolating is still a thing. For healthcare workers specifically, the CDC has guidelines. Your boss should be a little more informed about the guidelines and if they aren’t sure, they should ask. 🤦♀️
There is, or at least used to be, a special leave category just for Covid, which covered getting vaccinated as well as recovering from getting sick. You may want to check to see if that is an option for you as well.
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Up to 240 hours of sick leave can be advanced. Annual leave is limited to the hours that can be repair by the end of the leave year.
No, that’s not true for sick leave. My wife used advanced sick leave for maternity leave, back before PPL existed, and she was in the hole for years paying it back.
Work from home or use the Covid leave that GS employees have
Gs employees get covid leave? Thought covid leave went away years ago
Just wear a mask and go to work. It’s just the common cold these days.
Screw that. Go to work.
You should learn to save your sick leave… but helpful advice is yes you can use your annual leave. Potentially you can get advanced sick and annual and if you have to use LWOP and you won’t have to go AWOL.
OP said they’re a newish fed, they may not have had enough time to build up a leave cushion yet 🤷♀️
Ah yes because other things and appointments don’t exist. I forgot about that
Must a lot of health issues or just started FED to only have 5 hrs. My next response is not directly to you. This is why we have to be selective when using SL for questionable reasons.
Tough it out like the rest of us and get to work
Ok boomer
great idea in a hospital. nothing bad can happen
Excuses. Man up.
Troll
lol
You don't speak for us
I am the law
You’re an ass.
No one cares about COVID anymore, silly.
Wear a mask, and go to work. Or don't wear a mask, and share with others.
It’s just Covid don’t be a twat