Navigating Sick Days in Connecticut: What You Need to Know About Labor Laws

It’s 7:59 a.m. and I’m staring intently at my closet. My fleece pants are wrinkled and my brown boots are near the door but I seem to be frozen in time, unable to choose what to wear to work. It doesn’t help that the middle of summer seems to be the best time to catch an awful cold. A few days ago, I was fine and now I feel like I just got hit by a bus. To make matters worse, I ate something that doesn’t agree with my stomach and now I am praying to the porcelain god. Any other day and I would have been fine going into work and sitting in my cubicle with earphones in, getting some stuff done. But to do that when you feel sick? No, thank you. So what do I have to do? I have to call in sick. I don’t want to call out sick. I want to come to work, but that just isn’t something I can do today. I wouldn’t want to come into work and pass whatever bug I have to my co-workers anyway. A stuffy nose is one thing, but a contagious disease is another. We don’t want to be giving new hires the flu on their first day, right? Nope, tell them they have to go home and try again tomorrow after having learned a hard lesson about returning to work too soon. They’ll be back. What about our employers, though? What about those who go to work for a paycheck, get hours in exchange for time spent at an office or factory, and do it every single day of the week? How do we get them into work if they are sick? Well, we want to do it by the book, of course. So let’s look at some CT labor laws governing sick leave. Like I said, I don’t want to call out sick. But the law says I have to if I am genuinely sick. Or hurt. Or dying. The law doesn’t permit me to call out sick to go to the beach, for instance. Because that wouldn’t be “genuinely sick.” Now, if you want to look up the laws, you can see that they spell it all out for you in very direct language. What does the law say as far as taking sick time off work? It says, basically, that you can’t come to work in really bad shape and you should call out if you feel like throwing up. If you hesitate and decide to go to work anyway, you could put yourself and others in danger of catching your viral infection or being in a car accident when you faint at the wheel from blood loss due to whatever traumatic injury you’ve sustained. Of course, we’d all like to believe our bosses would be understanding and tell us that we can either take time off to get better or find another job. What I know about CT labor laws tells me that, more likely than not, employers will try to fire you for whatever reason they deem fit and they’ll wish you well on your way out the door. A good employer will let you take sick days to get better, but a bad employer will manipulate the labor laws to make sure you are terminated so he doesn’t have to pay for your sick time. CT labor laws are great for protecting us. The ones that protect us from the dangers of small bugs and major illnesses are obviously helpful in keeping us healthy, so we should follow them. I’m sure my boss would understand. But how do these CT labor laws impact my quality of life? Let’s say I actually had a grapefruit-sized tumor in my abdomen, for example. I call out sick one day. I go to work the next day and faint dead away, striking my head on the floor, resulting in a concussion that knocks me out for 6 months. CT labor laws require my employer to pay me my wages for all of my missed time in addition to extending my company-paid health insurance coverage so that I have insurance to cover all the medical bills. The company needs to pay for whatever time I miss, even though it won’t get its return on investment since I can’t come to work for a while. CT labor laws are designed to ensure that I won’t permanently suffer any market disadvantages as a result of my illness or trauma. Surely you’re thinking that your boss would give you the benefit of the doubt by allowing you to take a couple of sick days here and there. But many times, the employers will not willingly comply with the laws. After all, better to follow the letter of the law than to be facing lawsuits and fines for violations of sick time. So what if an employee is out sick and has made it out of the woods with his grapefruit-sized tumor? Well, CT labor laws say we’ll find out when he shows back up because his employer cannot require him to provide any notice or documentation of any required health care appointment or procedure. Even if his doctor gives a 6-month prognosis, the employer cannot question the diagnosis or treatment of the illness. Employers are stuck. The time has come. If an employer follows CT labor laws, he will have hearings and court proceedings booked solid for weeks to come. We all know the CT labor laws that govern calling out sick from work. We all know that we can take as many sick days as we need to be able to return to work in a healthy condition. We know that CT labor laws dictate so many factors influencing the situation at hand. Now we have an idea of how they impact our weekly routines.