Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station and Texas A&M University College of Engineering employees may donate sick leave hours to the sick leave pool. This pool allows eligible employees to request to withdraw hours due to a catastrophic illness or injury resulting in the exhaustion of earned leave.
A catastrophic illness or injury is a severe condition or combination of conditions affecting the mental or physical health of the employee or the employee’s immediate family that requires the services of a licensed practitioner for a prolonged period of time and that forces the employee to exhaust all leave time earned by that employee and to lose sick leave compensation from the state for the employee.
Eligibility Requirements
- An employee is eligible to request and receive sick leave pool hours if the employee suffers a catastrophic illness or injury for which the employee:
- Is or has been under a licensed practitioner’s care.
- Has been absent from work for a prolonged period, a minimum of 80 hours consecutively or intermittently. For part time employees, the requirement of 80 hours is proportional to their percent effort (50% or more effort).
- Eligible sick, vacation and/or compensatory time has been exhausted.
Reasons for Withdrawal
Reasons for sick leave pool withdrawal include:
- The member has a record of the hours that were donated to that member’s sick leave pool.
- The employee has a current illness or injury that is not catastrophic.
- The employee has exhausted the employee’s accrued sick leave.
- The employee will use the previously donated hours of accrued sick leave for absences arising from the current non-catastrophic illness or injury.
Requests to withdraw hours from the sick leave pool will route to the departmental leave administrator and the division head for review.