The health and safety of our employees continue to be our highest priority. During this pandemic, we have offered an additional 80 hours of leave to any employee who missed work due to COVID-19. With vaccines widely available and proven effective in slowing transmission rates and preventing serious complications, we recommend all employees receive them. Although we respect your personal choice, Schupan also has a financial responsibility to all of our employees to keep our workplace safe and operational.
A significant number of our recent absences due to COVID-19 have been for “close contact” — requiring an unvaccinated employee to miss 14-24 days of work. Symptom-free, vaccinated employees with “close contact” are not required to isolate, and therefore do not miss any time.
With our financial responsibility to all employees in mind, Schupan must make the following changes to our COVID-19 Leave Policy:
- Beginning on October 4th, Schupan will no longer provide COVID pay to employees who are unvaccinated unless required by federal or state law/statute.
- For unvaccinated employees who are off work due to either close contact or a positive COVID test, we will follow our PTO policy located in the Schupan Employee Handbook.
- For vaccinated employees who must miss work due to a positive COVID test or who are experiencing symptoms after close contact, 80 hours of COVID pay will still be available.
- If an employee has received their first shot and are in their waiting period for their second shot, Schupan will pay the employee for time away due to COVID-19 as if they were fully vaccinated.
We will continue to offer our COVID-19 vaccine incentive of $150. If vaccines are mandated through public policy, we will discontinue our vaccine incentive. We recommend receiving the COVID-19 vaccine prior to any federal mandate to take advantage of our incentive and protect yourself from potentially exhausting your PTO if a “close contact” or positive result occurs.
A second vaccine clinic will be held at our Davis Creek location next Friday, September 24th. Signups for the clinic will be made available early next week. We are coordinating with other vaccine administrators at our other locations to offer similar clinics. In the meantime, if you would like to receive the vaccine, please contact your healthcare provider or visit this online vaccine finder.
We will continue to monitor the situation closely and make adjustments to our policies when warranted. If you have any questions about this updated COVID-19 Leave Policy, please contact your TMR Liaison.
