Ailing employee may have to work.

Byline: ON THE JOB By Dan Grinfas For The Register-Guard

Question: Can my employer force me to come to work when I'm sick?

Answer: To be entirely accurate, an employer can't force you to do anything. If you're an at-will employee, you're free to quit if you disagree with your employer.

But you're probably asking whether your employer can discipline or terminate you for not reporting to work when you're ill.

The answer is yes, unless you have some sort of contract right to take sick leave or unless your illness falls into a category that entitles you to protected time off. An absence due to a routine illness, such as a cold or flu, generally won't give you any legal protection, even if you bring in a doctor's note.

If you are asked to show up for work despite being sick, perhaps you can change your employer's mind by pointing out that you're not likely to be very productive and that you may get your co-workers sick too.

An employer's demand that sick employees report for work is certainly questionable and isn't likely to help employee morale, but it's generally not illegal.

Your employer may not treat your absence as a disciplinary incident if a doctor has restricted you from work because of a compensable workers compensation injury.

Also, if you have a long-term or permanent disability covered under Oregon or federal law and you require time off work as an accommodation, your employer must allow this to the extent that it's reasonable and not an undue hardship for the business.

And if your condition qualifies as a "serious health condition" under the Oregon or federal leave laws, you're entitled to up to 12 weeks of protected leave during the year, if you have worked for your employer long enough to be eligible.

Question: Our union contract provides that any work time over eight hours a day will be paid at time-and-one-half, even if the employee doesn't work 40 hours that week. We have shop foremen who are nonunion, and we would like to allow the same benefit for them, but I was told a state law prohibits this, if the employees work less than 40 hours a week.

Is this true? If it's OK to pay the daily overtime, can we set a different policy at different branch locations?

Answer: Oregon and federal wage laws require nonexempt employees to receive overtime pay at time-and-one-half the regular hourly rate whenever they work more than 40 hours in a seven-day workweek.

For most employers in Oregon, daily overtime pay is not a requirement. Under law, an employee could work 12, 16 or even 24 hours in a day without being due overtime, if his or her weekly work hours don't exceed 40.

The law does require that certain manufacturing employees receive daily overtime after 10 hours in a day.

Though most employees aren't entitled to daily overtime, employers can always choose to be more generous than the law requires. So there's no problem with including a rule for time-and-one-half pay after eight hours a day in your collective bargaining agreement.

And it's fine to establish a similar daily overtime policy for your nonunion employees.

You're free to differentiate by branch location in setting this kind of policy, as long as you have a business reason. So you might say that your Eugene employees are entitled to daily overtime pay, but not your Salem or Bend employees. Policies that distinguish between workers based on worksite, job title, or even work shift aren't illegal.

What's prohibited is discrimination based on age, race, sex or any other civil rights protected classification.

For more details, visit www.boli.state.or.us/technical/tafaq.html.

On The Job is written by Dan Grinfas of the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries. Contact BOLI at [phone], or BOLI, 800 N.E. Oregon St. No. 32, Portland, OR 97232.