The Hutchinson City Council Tuesday gave approval to make major changes to the sick leave policy for the service employees union and dispatchers in an effort to make employees use their sick leave wisely.
Prior to being an impasse declared, the city and the unions held 8-formal negotiation sessions. The issues then went to mediation which was unsuccessful. The city then made a final offer to allow those hired before July 1, 1993, to be grandfathered under the sick leave payout provisions that were in effect prior to January 1, 2014, and those hired on or after July 1, 1993, be subject to the city’s new sick leave provisions.
Under the new policy, an employee will actually be able to collect more sick leave then before, but will loose the amount of sick leave which is paid out of that employee begins to increase the amount of leave used after reaching that threshold.
It also reduces the amount of leave paid out to a percentage of their wages and not their full wage. So, if an employee continues to keep their sick leave threshold at less then 35% of their year allowance, they get 33% of their balance paid out. If it increases to more then 45%, it then drops all the way to zero. This happened after several employees were paid more then 10-thousand dollars after only working a few years, but had built up their sick leave the then maximum number of 499-hours.
City officials say the July 1, 1993 date is significant since employees hired after this date are no longer allowed to include these type of supplemental cash payouts in the final average salary calculation for retirement.
In addition to making that decision, the council granted retroactive pay for those members of the SEIU/Dispatch bargaining unit that have not received their scheduled merit step increases due to the protracted labor negotiations for 2014.