Originally Posted by
sailingfun
The 7 day provision has always been there and almost never used by the company. Any company has a right to find out why a employee is absent. This agreement actually changes 7 to 15 days and forces the company to pay for the medical visit if required.
Sailing, please read this repost- 7 has not been changed to 15. It's a subtle but important change.
It's tricky, and you are missing the stricken sections such as "verification of sick leave will not normally be required for absences less than 7 days". That is gone for a reason!
This new policy creates two sick "buckets". VERIFIED and UNVERIFIED. If you get sick under the TA, you must consider that if you don't go to the Doctor and get a note for the company, it will now count against your 100 hours of UNVERIFIED sick leave. So you'll want to go get that note because if you don't get it while you're sick, there is no way to recapture that UNVERIFIED leave. And since you will be going on your own initiative, the company doesn't have to pay for the visit.
In addition to and inclusive of the above, if you are out more than 15 days, or 100 hours, or for any "good faith" reason the company wants to invent--(over a holiday, after vacation week, etc...) the company now REQUIRES a doctors certificate... For EVERY OCCURRANCE from a Medical Doctor, and in that case, you'd be reimbursed.
But it also begs the question about other reasons you aren't fit to fly, which I won't get into here, but as we all know we must self certify fit to fly. This new scheme would force you to disclose those reasons, whatever they may be.
To me this is a big change, and this used to be the sort of thing ALPA used to look out for us on. But now the NC claims the SLMP is gone when in fact it's been strengthened. This is not good for the pilots of DL.