How can I find out if this is even legal in IL without contacting an employment attorney?
HR just sent out an email with a few new policies. Note that HR is outsourced to a local company. The policy that made my jaw drop is that if you work from home without manager approval, you will get paid HALF your regular pay for the day. We’re all salaried. This was apparently triggered by a guy in another office working from home while out with pneumonia since his dept was so short staffed.
In my office, I’m the only one besides the import manager who has capability to work from home. I got approval over the summer for IT to put VPN/remote desktop software on my new personal laptop. I live 45 min from the office and this gets me out of having to drive to the office for something quick.
Couple months back I worked from home at the suggestion of the import manager, rather than taking the entire day off, when I had some car issues and had to take it into the shop. I asked HR about this situation and said I would still have gotten my full day’s pay under new policy for that situation.
Plus they used some dumb language that makes no sense. “Working form home is not allowed unless approved by your manager and surrounding the situation. Even if approved by a doctor, it be will paid half if your rate for the days worked from home.” WTF does “surrounding the situation” mean. I told HR it made NO sense and that “depending on the situation” would have made more sense. HR came back and told me they specially chose that working. WTF? This is proof the idiot owner (the Indian guy) hates people working from home.
Import manager emailed HR and asked if we would get paid for working a half day on the weekend for doing air freight. No answer yet.