Employees for the Town of Highlands have 60 days to get their first vaccination shot or will see their 80 hours of COVID-19 paid sick days expire.
The Families First Coronavirus Response Act required certain employers to provide their employees with paid sick leave or expanded family and medical leave for specified reasons related to COVID-19.
The act provided up to 80 hours of job-protected (and federally financed) paid time off for workers at their regular rate of pay in cases where they are unable to work because of quarantine (pursuant to federal, state, or local government order or advice of a health care provider) or experiencing COVID-19 symptoms and seeking a medical diagnosis. Workers are also entitled to the same 80 hours at two-thirds of their pay to care for quarantined family member of a child whose school or child care provider is closed or unavailable for reasons related to COVID-19.
“We followed that for some eight months,” Highlands town manager Josh Ward said. “If someone got sick or had the symptoms, they stayed out, got tested and were paid for that time. In late spring and early summer, when the cases dwindled down, we decided to go away from that requirement.”
Now with an uptick in cases, Ward brought the item back to the board for approval.
“With the cases in town hall and all around the county, a lot of our employees are going to have to be out for two weeks,” Ward said. “My recommendation would be to bring back that COVID sick time. Macon County has continued to pay their employees for the sick time and continue to do that, as far as I know.”
According to town lawyer, Jay Coward, the town is able to determine whether or not to give the paid sick time to employees that are vaccinated or not.
“There are a lot of people that are saying that it would go against civil liberties, but public safety has always trumped any kind of civil liberty that anyone can ask,” Coward said.
Commissioner Brian Stiehler brought up the idea of requiring vaccination to get the paid sick leave as an incentive for town employees to get vaccinated.
“The doctor that we talked to before said himself that 98 percent of the people in the hospital with COVID are unvaccinated,” Stiehler said. “It seems to me that being unvaccinated would hit the town harder financially, overtime. Being home sick for two weeks is one thing but being unvaccinated and in intensive care is another.”
Commissioner John Dotson said that he hopes and prays for the best outcome for anyone who gets sick but does not want to pat anyone on the back for not getting the vaccine.
“I don’t want to pat anyone on the back and send them home for two weeks without pay when they have had eight to nine months to go and get the shot,” Dotson said.
Commissioner Amy Patterson agreed with Dotson.
“There’s no good answer to this question,” Patterson said. “We obviously want to support our employees, but at the same time, we don’t want to award somebody for reckless behavior. The shot is free, we gave them time off to get the shot and gave them whatever they needed, and they still didn’t get the shot. This is a public health crisis. So, why would we not make them accountable for their actions? If you did not take the readily available precautions, then you have to take the consequences.”
Commissioner Donnie Calloway made a motion to give the benefits up to two months from Aug 19, contingent on the fact that the town employees are vaccinated within the two months. Patterson seconded the motion, and it was passed unanimously.
By Christopher Smith