Employee’s mood sizzling after he’s despatched house with out pay due to fever | Life

Q: If I go to work every day, I need to have my temperature taken before I can enter. Last week I had a temperature (100.1 degrees, not much) and was told to go home and not come back until I had a test for COVID-19. Needless to say, my work doesn’t pay me for my free time, nor do they post for the test. Can’t I go back to work if you don’t pay?

A: Sending you home with no more with a fever may be a bit of an exaggeration, but it is not illegal. Under a Michigan law passed last December, an employee who has one of the “main symptoms” of COVID-19 cannot report to work until they have received a negative test or completed a health care professional recommended quarantine period for COVID The worker’s symptoms have improved, and in a case like yours where a fever was reported, “24 hours have passed since the fever cleared without antipyretic medication”.

While you may need to take time out until you can demonstrate that you are not infected with the virus (or that you are feeling much better), your employer must not fire you, discipline you, or retaliate for being forced to leave your home stay .

Under Michigan law, your employer doesn’t have to pay for your COVID-19 test – although most insurers cover tests for free – and your employer doesn’t have to pay you for your free time, unless you have a sick leave under a work policy Available.

Federal law doesn’t require your employer to give you time off, but it does provide an incentive – in the form of a tax credit – to do so. Under the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), approved March 11 by President Joe Biden, employers can receive credit for voluntarily providing an employee with up to 80 hours of paid sick leave or up to 12 weeks of paid family medical leave how the worker is:

• Are subject to a state or local quarantine or isolation order;

• Has been advised to self-quarantine by a health care provider;

• experience symptoms of COVID-19 and seek a medical diagnosis or wait for the results of a COVID test if the worker has been exposed and the employer has requested the test;

• Receiving a COVID vaccine or recovering from an illness related to receiving the vaccine;

• take care of someone who is in quarantine;

• Looking after a child whose school, day care center or childcare is closed due to COVID.

Whether your employer decides to take the tax credit and give you paid leave is up to him or her.

Daniel A. Gwinn’s Troy practice focuses on labor law, civil litigation, estate, and trusts and estates. Contact him with your legal questions at [email protected] or visit the website at gwinnlegal.com. “Ask the Lawyer” is for information only and should not be taken as legal advice.