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Donations needed for Lab's catastrophic leave program

Laboratory employees who have a large amount of vacation time may want to consider donating some of it to a catastropic leave bank that was recently established. Donations are needed to meet several recent requests for leave from Lab workers.

The Catastrophic Paid Leave program allows Laboratory employees to donate up to one half of their unused vacation time to a "bank" for use by other employees who don't have sick or leave time available and are suddenly faced with a truly catastrophic situation, typically life-threatening, that forces them to be off work for an extended period. Only vacation time can be donated and employees have to use up all their sick and leave time before they are eligible for catastrophic leave.

The program was started in 2003 and is available to University of California Laboratory employees who accrue vacation and sick time. Catastrophic paid leave requests can be made for any sudden illnesses or accident for the employee or employee's family member, but cannot be used for noncatastrophic events, such as scheduled surgeries or pregnancy leaves. It also cannot be used to extend a bereavement period.

The employee who requests catastrophic paid leave can receive a maximum of 160 hours per calendar year, but the amount an employee receives depends on the total amount available in the "bank" and the number of other requests pending in the program at the time, said Tawanda Dickman of Occupational Medicine (HSR-2).

"Currently, we have several of our co-workers in critical need. The only way we can assist them is if more of us donate time to the fund," said Dickman.

Donation forms can be found online under "Select a Shortcut" to Official Documents, to online forms, to Catastrophic Paid Leave on the Lab's home page. Click on form number 1851, "Request to Donate Leave."

UC Lab employees who want to donate vacation time to the sick leave bank should contact Kathy Reyes of Accounting (CFO-1) at 7-8186 or 5-5562 by fax.

For more information, contact Dickman at 5-4147 or see the Sept. 8, 2004 Daily Newsbulletin.

--Steve Sandoval

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