In Orange County, voters will be asked to approve 56 hours of sick time per year...

[steve2470]

(unless they already receive more) for every employee of an Orange County business of 15 people or more. Hopefully people will vote for this. It's not just for being sick but for family members, seeking medical care, public health emergencies, etc.

I got my absentee ballot for the August 26th election, so check your mailbox.

[brewens]

1. We lost our sick leave a couple years ago. It's now worked into our PTO benefits. We got a bump

in PTO (paid time off) accrual to compensate and a serious illness benefit that I think more than makes up for it. Basically, we have to use our PTO for any short term illness. If it's a more serious thing, you have to use a week of PTO before the serious illness benefit kicks in. Last I looked, I had over 500 hours of that built up. I think it got that high because I had considerable sick leave built up that converted to the new plan.

Under the old system we had people scamming us. They want to treat sick leave as extra vacation time. They would strategically call in sick at regular intervals and steadily use it. Not as bad as two guys I knew that worked at a state liqour store though. That whole crew played it like vacation time because theirs didn't roll over. Toward the end of the year, they took turns calling in to make sure they used it all up.