Thanks to a voter-approved initiative from November 2016, all WSU employees—including student workers—are eligible for paid sick leave.
The sick leave portion of Initiative 1433 took effect on Jan. 1 2018. In addition to increasing the minimum wage in increments over the next several years, the new law directs all employers in Washington to provide non-exempt employees one hour of paid sick leave for every 40 hours worked.
For WSU employees, the change does not affect faculty and staff that already earned sick leave prior to the law. However, both student and non- student hourly employees benefit from the new law. Workers can view the amount of sick leave they have available by logging into MyWSU and navigating to the “HR, Payroll and Benefits” tab.
“This new law allows us to pay employees who are working on temporary or part-time basis sick leave, whereas before you had to be in a full- time or permanent appointment in order to be accruing sick leave,” explained Helen Gregory, administrative manager for student affairs and enrollment.
According to an information sheet provided by WSU to affected workers, employees can use accrued sick leave “to care for yourself or a family member; when you or a family member is the victim of sexual assault, domestic violence, or stalking; or in the event WSU or your child’s school or place of care is closed by order of a public official for any health-related reason.”
Gregory helped implement the change by printing new time slips so employees could record the sick leave they claim. “Between student government, OSI, Student Affairs, the Fitness Center and the Wellness Center—I did over 200 time slips,” she said. Because other departments like the library, IT and the cafeteria hire students and temporary employees, Gregory said she would guess about 300 employees at WSUV benefited from the change.
For people working multiple jobs on campus, leave is collected into one pot. “If you have multiple positions on campus—which a number of our students do—then you’re accruing sick leave based on the total number of hours you’ve worked.” The accrual is not separated by position. Gregory did clarify that if you call in sick, you can only claim leave from the department where you would have been working your shift.
Student employees didn’t get updated time slips for tracking sick leave until February. Gregory explained, “We didn’t give out new employee time slips until February 1st, because you can’t use any sick leave you accrue until the month after you accrue it.”
According to WSUV Human Resource Director Randy Boose, other issues behind the scenes also delayed implementation. “The law doesn’t cover all the issues that come up from a practical side,” he explained. The school had to work their attorneys and the state to make sure the change was implemented correctly. “We were still working in January to do the behind the scenes stuff to get it to work and to train the departments on what they needed to do.”
Now that the change is implemented Boose said his department is happy to answer employee questions. “If they have questions they can come to HR or go to the online FAQs,” he said. Employees need to know that sick leave is now an option and that they can’t be punished for using it, he explained.
Additional information about sick leave is available at the following links.
• http://bit.ly/WageWSU
• http://bit.ly/WagePDF