Good Afternoon,
While things are settling down a bit, we are still receiving a lot of questions and receiving new guidance to distribute.
Active issues on our radar:
The state may be issuing some new “rolling furlough” language related to unemployment. We don’t have any details on this as of yet and nothing has been published in writing by the state.
With the extension of the SAH orders, we are seeking extensions of drug testing policy waivers from the appropriate entities.
Local 481 sent out some guidance on what the fund will be needing from employers providing healthcare coverage under the FFCRA. It was a little confusing. The plan requires 40 hours a week of contributions in order to maintain coverage. This is not to say that the plan is specifying regular pay under the act requires 40 hours a week, as this is determined on a case-by-case basis based on each employee's work schedule.
While 481 has already stated that they do not require contributions into the HRA or RPF to be compliant with the Act, the NECA-IBEW ("Decatur") plan has yet to issue this guidance. As I stated in my post on Saturday, we believe they soon will.
As a follow-up to my email earlier today, I did want to make sure we are still thinking long term in addition to reacting to our current crisis. I am aware that this is a terrible time for us to be asking you to get involved in a political campaign, but we are in a bit of a pickle as early voting in the state has already started. I cannot stress to you enough how detrimental it would be if J.R. Gaylor were to win this Senate seat. Not, “we’re-having-a-plague-and-everything-is-awful" bad, but it would be really less than ideal for all of us in the long term.
In blind and name presence polling, our guy Scott Baldwin is winning every time, but unfortunately J.R. has a massive war chest and is really hitting up the district. Without resources, despite our candidate being superior in every way, we could lose this thing. So please, if you can, take a moment and log on to www.votebaldwin.com and donate if possible. Without your support, we will find ourselves in a less than desirable position when all this is over.
I want to thank Jeff Chlystun who called in today and pointed out that we’ve been less than clear on the differences between Emergency Paid Sick Leave and Emergency Family Medical Leave under the FFCRA and specifically who qualifies for which type of leave. In short, the only reason a person gets paid Emergency FMLA is for child care not being available due to COVID-19. I also want to thank Sara Smith who passed along the following resource serendipitously just after Jeff raised his concern which provides a wonderful comparison of eligibility under all the different acts we have out there now. I think this is the clearest and most up to date resource we have on this specific subject.
If you have other issues you would like us to address or think we should be working on, please let me know.