I don't understand any of this
From the original post, I'm seeing two possible questions:
"A carrier took leave for three days, and one of those days fell on their relief. Management is asking for a doctor's note and recording the carrier as absent."
Question 1: Is the carrier required to provide a doctor's note when one of the three days falls on a relief?
There unfortunately doesn't seem to be much information in the form of written policy to address this specific situation.
Management is making the argument that since the carrier was scheduled as working their relief, that their relief day counts as one of those three days that sets off a requirement for medical documentation.
My counter-argument to that is that when a relief day falls within a leave period, management automatically honors the relief day and records the relief day as just that (a J or a K). The carrier is not paid for that day, nor is their sick leave deducted from. The day is treated as though the carrier had the relief day and as though the carrier was not scheduled.
Since the carrier therefore was only paid out for two days, I'm considering this as two days with the relief day being an actual day of relief. Therefore, management can treat this as only two working days instead of three.
Question 2: Is the carrier absent if they are scheduled in on their relief day and call out sick?
Going back to the prior counterargument, when a day of relief is adjacent to a day of leave the day of relief is honored as a day of relief. The carrier is granted leave in the form of their relief day (a J or a K), but their sick leave is not paid out. Again, the relief day has now gone from being "scheduled in" back to a relief day.
The carrier cannot be absent because their relief day was in effect. Since only two days of leave were paid out, only two days were considered "working days."
My question in this instance is how the absence was recorded: LWOP, AWOL, or as a relief day (J or K)? If the carrier was recorded as AWOL, that has negative consequences that can lead to discipline and/or removal. If recorded as LWOP, LWOP is administered to cover days that the carrier was not present when sick leave is not used.
Since a rural regular cannot use annual, sick, or an X day on their relief day, management would most likely like to want to use LWOP to show that they did schedule the carrier in, but that the carrier was unable to report to work for legitimate reasons and leave was not used.
At least that is how my brain is twisting around the subject. I'm not the authority on any of this stuff. There just doesn't seem to be a concrete answer here. My general thought process is to protect the lives of carriers by protecting their jobs, so even if there is no policy I will try to make an argument that satisfies both management's need for an answer to their superiors and protects the carrier from discipline.
