Three counties will send ‘swine flu’ sufferers home
Three counties preparing to deal with H1N1 flu have a message for sick employees: Go home!
It’s not a request; it’s an order.
Recently, boards of supervisors in Essex County, N.Y., Culpeper County, Va. and Pima County, Ariz. voted by decisive margins to authorize department heads to send home employees exhibiting signs of the so-called swine flu.
In Essex and Culpeper, employees must use sick leave, if they have enough. If they don’t, both counties have okayed workers’ borrowing sick days and using vacation time.
“We will allow them to draw down sick time from 2010, even though they haven’t earned it yet,” said Essex County Manager Daniel Palmer. It will be repaid as they accumulate new leave. His Board of Supervisors voted 16–2 earlier this month to approve the policy. Unlike in Culpeper, this will apply to seasonal flu as well.
 In Pima, employees with no sick time must take leave without pay. Ill employees who refuse to go home risk discipline or firing.
Culpeper supervisors voted 5–2 in favor of their policy a few weeks ago. “That’s not to say we’re going to send everyone with a sniffle home,” said Frank Bossio, county administrator. The policy would be in force if an H1N1 flu outbreak is declared in the county. Supervisor Sue Hansohn, who opposed the measure, asked, “What will be next — hiring someone to take everyone’s temperature?” the Free Lance- Star reported. Her colleague Supervisor Steve Nixon, a proponent of the policy, said, “This is just a tool to guard against the rapid spread of the H1N1 virus.
In Essex County, Palmer said they crafted a memorandum of understanding with unions representing about 450 of the county’s 650 employees. It states, in part, that if department heads or their designees have a “reasonable belief or suspicion” that an employee has H1N1 or seasonal flu “the Department Head and/or his designee shall have full authority to order that person not to come in to work or to leave work and not to return to work until the Department Head and/or his designee approves the return to work.”
The decision is to be made based on an employee’s exhibiting such symptoms as fever higher than 100 degrees F with cough, sore throat, runny or stuffy nose, body aches, headache, chills, fatigue, diarrhea and vomiting. Based on CDC recommendations, the sick employees are to stay home until at least 24 hours after their flu symptoms have subsided, according to the MOU.
Palmer said the county will provide “throwaway thermometers” that department heads give symptomatic employees to check for fever.
Elsewhere, Hennepin County, Minn., commissioners voted in August to allow employees to exceed their accumulated vacation and sick leave by up to 160 hours if a swine flu emergency were to occur.
In all cases, the goal is to limit the spread of the disease. Hennepin County Administrator Richard Johnson said the expansion of sick leave is designed to address ill employees and those who may have to care for sick family members for an extended period of time. “It takes one more stress out of their life so that they can deal with that personal situation but also come back to work and feel that they were not being penalized or in a situation where they don’t have benefits.” In Hennepin, the policy only applies to H1N1 flu.
For now, the Minnesota county seems to be in the clear. Johnson said absences among the county’s 7,500 employees remain steady at typical levels, about 1.5 percent. But the rate is being monitored “to see if it starts to edge up or not.”
He said each county department has individually developed its own pandemic plan, and the county has identified which critical services — such as social and human services — would need to be kept up and running, and which, like libraries, might have to be closed to maximize “social distancing” and minimize opportunities for people to gather together.
The county officials interviewed acknowledge that there is potential for abuse, but Palmer said that will be dealt with as usual, through disciplinary measures.
“Sick leave abusers will find a way to abuse sick leave no matter what,” he said. “We’re more concerned about those good employees who for whatever reason may be short on time, who due to their own financial situation can’t afford to go off the payroll so they drag themselves in to work. We don’t want to impact the whole work force because of that reason.”
For a State and Local Pandemic Influenza Planning Checklist, visit www.flu.gov/professional/states/statelocalchecklist.html.
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