Sent home without pay? Some state employees burn through leave as quarantines enforced

It's unclear how many of these employees have regular sick leave or other leave available, allowing them to be paid if they can't do their job from home and they're sent home after a positive coronavirus test or after contact with someone who tested positive.

Whatever problems this might cause should abate as more employees get vaccinated, Gov. Roy Cooper's office indicated Wednesday.

"The Office of State Human Resources will continue to review available leave policies to ensure flexibility and support for state employees," spokesman Jordan Monaghan said in a statement. "As more state employees get vaccinated, the need to quarantine for exposure should decrease since fully vaccinated individuals typically do not need to quarantine."

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The policy has been, in state prisons, for example, that if people can't work from home, they are sent home for 14 days if they're exposed to someone with COVID-19. Just one of those forced quarantines could eat up the 80 hours of special virus-related leave state employees have.

The Department of Public Safety, which includes the prison system, has the lowest rate, at 53 percent, but OSHR said when it sent percentages late Wednesday that a large DPS data upload still needed processing.

The State Employees Association of North Carolina said it has heard some concerns from employees who ran out of pandemic leave, but being quarantined without pay isn't a common complaint.

Even so, SEANC Executive Director Ardis Watkins said the state may need to rework its policies.

"I think it's time to look at the 80 hours in places that are institutional places (like prisons and state hospitals)," she said. "I think there's no way 80 hours is going to cut it."

WRAL News heard from one woman, now a former state employee who worked at the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women, who got paid 26 cents for all of August. She provided pay records to prove it.

Angela Alston said she was sent home during this time because of a contact exposure and that she was given two different explanations for the low pay. One person, she said, told her it was because her supervisor died of COVID-19 and hadn't put in her timecard. Another said she'd run out of leave and that they pay was accurate, Alston said.

Officials in the prison system and at the Office of State Human Resources said they couldn't discuss an employee's specific case. Alston said she quit recently after being told to work in the same area where a staffer who'd been sent home after a positive virus test had been working that day.

“I said, 'I’ll work anywhere else,'" Alston said. "I was forced to quit”

It's not clear what happened in Alston's case, but her initial call was the reason WRAL started asking the prison system and the Office of State Human Resources three weeks ago about pandemic leave policies and burn-through rates.

OSHR spokeswoman Jill Lucas said this week that the office couldn't say how many employees have exhausted all types of leave and don't get paid when sent home. The office was able to say that 1,600 people, out of roughly 59,000 state agency employees, have used up their 80 hours of pandemic leave.

Lucas said "just more than 500 are approaching the 80-hour total."

"If the 80 hours of administrative leave have been exhausted, and if no other sources of paid leave are available, employees have the option to use their compensatory time, sick leave or vacation leave," Lucas said in an email. "Some agencies are also providing a leave bank or granting employees advanced leave."

At times during the pandemic, other sources of paid leave were also available for documented COVID-19 absences, Lucas said.

Lucas said there are too many variables to say how much total leave the average employee has, but full-time employees generally earn eight hours of sick leave per month, which carries over each year and cumulates indefinitely.

Asked whether leave issues are causing a problem for state government or its employees, and whether OSHR Director Barbara Gibson could discuss the issue in an interview, Lucas said Gibson "is not available to discuss this."