N.J.A.C. 4A:6-1.3 Sick leave

Your sick leave

Start with the general provisions section, as with vacation. Local employees are entitled under this subchapter to subsections (a) through (h) of the sick leave rule, which is most of it but not the whole of it, and the verification machinery that governs how sick leave is actually policed sits in a different section that applies to State service only. Vacation and sick leave for local police officers and firefighters are established by local ordinance instead.

The credit itself is one of the few places where State and local employees are treated alike. One working day for the initial month if you started between the 1st and the 8th, half a day if between the 9th and the 23rd, then one working day for each month of service to the end of the first calendar year. After that, 15 working days credited at the beginning of each calendar year in anticipation of continued employment. Part-time and 10-month employees receive a proportionate amount.

Accrual is not continuous. Paid sick days do not accrue during a leave of absence without pay or a suspension, though they do continue during a voluntary furlough or furlough extension leave, and they stop once you have resigned or retired even while your name is kept on the payroll to exhaust vacation or compensatory leave. Exhaust your sick days in a year and you are credited with no more until the next calendar year begins. What is unused accumulates from year to year without limit, and it survives an intergovernmental transfer, except that a firefighter, or a law enforcement officer, sheriff's officer or county correction officer who waived accumulated sick leave, accrues from the effective date of the transfer instead.

Four uses are permitted, and the third and fourth are wider than the phrase sick leave suggests. Personal illness or injury. Exposure to contagious disease. Care, for a reasonable period, of a seriously ill member of your immediate family. And death in the immediate family, again for a reasonable period. Immediate family is defined generously in the rules: spouse, domestic partner, civil union partner, children including legal wards, grandchildren and children in your care under a placement, parents and legal guardians, grandparents, siblings, parents-in-law, other relatives living in your household, and any other individual whose close association with you is the equivalent of a family relationship. Separately, an employee with a disability may use sick leave for absences related to acquiring or using an aid needed to function on the job, on reasonable proof.

Verification is where sick leave usually goes wrong, and in State service the rules are specific. Notify the designated contact person by your scheduled reporting time, or at least an hour before starting time on a unit requiring 24-hour or shift coverage. Proof of illness may be required where there is reason to believe sick leave is being abused, after five or more consecutive work days out, or after an aggregate of more than 15 days in a 12-month period. A chronic or recurring condition causing occasional absences of a day or less needs one proof every six months, specifying the nature of the illness and that periodic absences from employment can be expected from it. The appointing authority may require examination by a physician it designates and pays for, as a condition of continuing sick leave or returning to work. Failure to follow the notification and verification procedures may mean the absence is denied, may be treated as abuse of sick leave, and may itself be cause for discipline, which lines up with chronic or excessive absenteeism being one of the listed general causes.

What accumulated leave is worth at the end depends on how you leave. An employee does not get reimbursed for accumulated sick leave on leaving State service, other than on retirement, where supplemental compensation is paid at one-half the daily rate of pay for each unused accumulated day, based on average annual compensation in the last full year, and capped at $15,000. For a local employee, what happens to a large sick leave balance is not answered by this subchapter.

Related on this site: /jurisdiction/state, /jurisdiction/local

Written by the NJ Civil Service Navigator editorial team. Every statement here traces to the rules cited on this page. It is not legal advice, and a collective agreement may change how these rules apply to you.