H1N1? You may get sent home

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September 28, 2009

Essex County empowers managers to issue order

By LOHR McKINSTRY The Press Republican Mon Sep 28, 2009, 11:28 PM EDT

ELIZABETHTOWN — Essex County is giving its administrators emergency powers to order workers to go home if they appear to have the swine flu.

On Monday, the County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to confer send-home authority to county department heads who believe employees have the H1N1 virus strain, commonly called the swine flu.

"If any department head or his deputy reasonably believed any employee has H1N1 virus or similar, he would have the authority to send that person home," County Attorney Daniel Manning III said.

"That person would remain home for a 24-hour period after the symptoms subside."

TIME QUESTIONS
A controversy centers on how those with no time off coming would be compensated by the county, however.

"Anybody who has been ordered not to come to work would use their regular, approved sick time," Manning said.

"If they didn't have that, they would use their approved vacation time, personal time, comp time.

"Those employees who do not have any of that will be able to jump into the next year and use that."

But Supervisor Thomas Scozzafava (R-Moriah) said they might not be able to legally pay those who have no time off coming.

"I don't believe you can give a benefit for unearned time. If they don't have any time, they'll be off the books" with no pay.

SICK DAYS BANK
Manning said he'd check the law, but County Manager Daniel Palmer said the county already has a bank of sick days that workers can use when they've exhausted their own sick time.

"Whether the (state) comptroller will approve it or not approve it, I don't think is an issue," Palmer said. "When they use the sick-bank time, that's time they don't actually have."

He said he'll look into whether workers with swine flu who have no time coming can use sick-bank time. That time is donated by workers who don't use all of their sick days in a year.

Manning said health-care professionals believe that after seven days the illness has run its course.

"The general consensus is this is an emergency situation. We don't want people coming to work and infecting anyone else."

EMERGENCY PLANS
The way the swine flu is spreading, it's almost certain they'll have some cases this winter, Essex County Emergency Services Director Donald Jaquish said.

"We're trying to be proactive before this flu hits, and we believe it will."

He said they're developing emergency plans on what to do if large numbers of correction officers at the County Jail or 911 dispatchers are sick with the H1N1 virus.

He said the swine-flu strain that's circulating is not a serious one, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

"It seems to be a mild flu. It's not a volatile strain. They feel the person will get over it."

County Department of Social Services Commissioner John O'Neill said their plan may have some issues, but the objective is to contain the spread of the virus.

"The idea is to plan for the worst, hope for the best. The CDC recommends that all employers plan for the worst. If we have rolling outages, as much as half the workforce could be out for six months at a time."

TEMPERATURE
Palmer said all department heads will be provided with criteria for determining if someone might have the swine flu.

"The key is usually whether they have a temperature. If their temperature is over 100 (degrees), they have some type of flu. The swine flu comes with very high temperatures."

E-mail Lohr McKinstry at: lmckinstry@pressrepublican.com