Worker’s temper hot after he’s sent home without pay due to fever

Q: When I go to my job each day, I have to have my temperature taken before I’m allowed in. Last week, I had a temperature (100.1 degrees, nothing much), and I was told to go home and not come back until I

A had taken a test for COVID-19. : Sending you home Needless to say, for a fever, without my work is not paying more, may be a bit me for my time off, and of overkill but it is not they aren’t ponying up illegal. Under a Michigan for the test, either. If law enacted last they won’t pay, can’t I December, an employee go back to work? who displays one of the “principal symptoms” of COVID-19 cannot report to work until he or she has received a negative test, or has completed a period of quarantine recommended by a health care professional, the worker’s COVID-19 symptoms have improved and, in a case like yours where fever was reported, “24 hours have passed since the fever subsided without the use of fever-reducing medication.”

While you may have to take time off, until you can prove you don’t have the virus (or are feeling a lot better), your employer isn’t allowed to discharge, discipline or retaliate against you because you were forced to stay home.

Michigan law does not require your employer to pay for your

COVID-19 test — although most insurers are covering tests for free — nor does it require your employer to pay you for your time off, unless you have sick time available under a work policy.

Federal law does not require your employer to give you time off, but it does provide an incentive — in the form of a tax credit — to do so. Under the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) approved March 11 by President Joe Biden, employers can receive a credit if they voluntarily provide an employee up to 80 hours of paid sick time, or up to 12 weeks of paid emergency family medical leave as long as the worker is:

• subject to a federal state or local quarantine or isolation order;

• has been advised by a health care provider to self-quarantine;

• experiencing symptoms

of COVID-19 and is seeking a medical diagnosis, or is waiting the results of a COVID test if the employee has been exposed and the employer has requested the test;

• obtaining a COVID vaccine, or is recovering from an illness related to receiving the vaccine;

• caring for someone who is in quarantine;

• caring for a child whose school, day care or child care is closed due to COVID.

Whether your employer will decide to take the tax credit and give you paid time off is up to him or her.