Benefits? I'm sorry, we don't provide benefits

Several people on my project have applied for sick time recently. The District of Columbia passed a law last year that forces employers to give sick pay to employees under certain circumstances. The agency for which I am currently working, apparently without thinking about it very much, adopted the city statute as its sick-pay policy. The relevant part of that  statute and policy reads as follows:

•    Employers with 100 or more employees must provide 1 hour of paid sick leave for every 37 hours worked, not to exceed 7 days (56 hours) per year.
•  To be eligible, an individual must be employed by the same employer for at least 1 year without a break in service over 6 weeks, and has worked at least 1,000 hours.

Personally, I got screwed a few months ago by the 1-year employment requirement. While I have been working for this agency for most of the last three years, I worked for another agency for about six weeks in November and December 2012. Sorry, not eligible.

The project I am on, however, has been going since October 2011. While I joined it in January 2013, a pretty good number of people have been on this project for nearly two years. Obviously, they meet the one-year requirement.

Alas, this is a 60 hours/week project, so many people on this project are working overtime. (I can't say "most," but I'll talk about that in another post. Needless to say, I am taking as many of the available hours as I can, and hit 60 most weeks.) Imagine the surprise of several people recently who have been on this project for more than a year who had their sick time turned down. They, apparently, missed a little nuance in company policy, which reads like this:

·               While the policy is intended to prevent and protect employees from the loss of regular income when missing work for illnesses, it is not intended to provide additional or supplemental pay over a standard 40 hour work week or 8 hour day. For example, if an employee has worked 40 hours between Monday and Thursday of a week, sick pay cannot be used pay to 48 hours per week if Friday is missed due to illness. However, if a contractor has worked 36 hours between Monday and Thursday, we will allow 4 hours of sick time to be used if the absence on Friday is for one of the reasons covered by the policy. Unless a job explicitly guarantees a work week of over 40 hours, 40 hours (8 hours per day) will be considered "regular pay" for all contractors.

Just in case you're wondering, no project "requires" overtime. It is available, period. What this policy does -- and the policy was not written until about a week ago -- is ensure that anyone on a project that has overtime hours available will not be able to utilize sick time if they are working the overtime hours available. In other words, the people who are accruing the most sick time by working the most hours won't be able to use any of that sick time. Got it? I'm not sure why the agency would want to write a policy on sick leave that discourages working overtime -- which I think makes the agency more money and certainly is the only way for temps to make a living -- but that's what they are doing. Obviously, most temps want overtime and will work those hours, even if it means they can't take sick time. Doesn't mean they feel warm and fuzzy about the agency that makes it impossible for them to get sick time. Note to agency: Don't pop off to me about a benefit you claim to offer that I can't get because I work too hard, fuckhead.

Yeah, and agencies wonder why we don't trust them. I guess it's because they never miss an opportunity to fuck us.