The Cottonwood City Council voted to extend the city’s COVID-19 sick leave policy as well as offer it to some employees retroactively in light of the recent spike in the Delta variant.
Shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic began in May 2020, the federal government passed the Families First Coronavirus Response Act. Part of the act required employers to pay up to 80 hours, or two weeks, of paid sick leave to employees who had to stay home from work for COVID-related reasons.
While the FFCRA regulations expired Dec. 31, 2020, the Cottonwood City Council voted to extend them through June 30, 2021. However, due to a recent increase in COVID-19 cases and exposure among city staff, the council was presented with the idea of reinstating the leave through Dec. 31, 2021, as well as reimbursing sick leave to those who had to use their own sick leave for COVID-19 related reasons between July 1 and now.
The town plans to follow the same rules that were in place before, in which the city will provide 80 hours of paid COVID sick leave, then, for those who require more time off, the city will cover two-thirds of the sick leave pay while the remaining third will be taken from the employee’s regular sick leave allowance for up to 10 weeks.
“It just helps out our employees so we know they stay home until they’re fully healthy and they don’t come back and infect anyone else,” said Kirsten Lennon, financial services director and interim human resources manager for the city of Cottonwood. “We’re hoping that this helps out with this Delta spike and that we can then go back to our normal sick policy.”
City Manager Ron Corbin said the policy was beneficial in many ways including helping those who were already running low on regular sick leave hours. The policy also encourages employees to be honest when they have been exposed or aren’t feeling well and allows them to stay home and keep from spreading the virus to others.
“This guarantees them paid leave,” he said. “We don’t want people not to tell us the truth and so we don’t want them to put their leave at risk and then put others at risk.”
The reason city staff wants to provide sick leave pay retroactively is that there have been multiple recent incidents of staff members becoming sick or being exposed, and they want to make sure they are still compensated for the time they had to take off.
Corbin cited one recent example in which the city had to send home 80% of the staff in multiple departments because of COVID-19 exposure. He also shared that there have been a few newer employees that didn’t have any of their own sick time accrued when they had to take leave due to COVID, and therefore wouldn’t be paid for the time lost.
All in all, at least 10 employees have been impacted, including those who have been vaccinated and have taken every precaution.
“It’s not that these are people who just didn’t get vaccinated or aren’t wearing masks or aren’t doing things, you know, it’s just life happens and they’re doing all they can to be safe,” he said.
The council unanimously voted to allow the temporary reinstatement of their COVID sick leave policy.
