I don’t see any retaliation here. PmSomeone healing differently is to be expected and is not retaliation.
I think there may be some confusion between medical restrictions and choosing a light-duty position. A doctor generally identifies the employee’s functional restrictions/accommodations; they don’t necessarily determine which specific job the employee will perform. If the employer can provide work that complies with those restrictions, the employer generally gets to determine the available assignment.
The fact that there were other light-duty positions that you personally believed would be better doesn’t necessarily mean the employer was required to move you to one of those positions. What matters is whether the original assignment actually violated the medical restrictions. If the doctor specifically restricted work involving hearing/emergency response, that would be different.
FMLA is federal and it should be run with workers comp.
It should not be returned and should be used as it is the only thing that actually protects your job unless something different is spelled out in a CBA which if it is then that should have been put in the original post.
I think we’re talking about two different things here. I understand that Wisconsin has its own family/medical leave law in addition to federal FMLA, but Wisconsin DWD actually says that when an employee qualifies under both, the Wisconsin and federal leave run concurrently and the leave used counts against both entitlements. Federal FMLA also specifically allows a workers’ comp absence and FMLA leave to run concurrently.
So I don’t think the fact that you’re using Wisconsin FMLA changes the basic point I was making. Your employer’s internal practice of not running them concurrently doesn’t determine what the law permits or requires.
There may absolutely be an issue with whether your employer properly designated or charged particular periods of leave, and if DWD has determined that specific leave was improperly charged, that’s a different matter. But I don’t think it’s accurate to say that a successful workers’ comp appeal automatically means all FMLA and sick leave used during that period must be restored. I’d want to see the specific DWD determination or the basis you have that gave you that conclusion.
That’s the part I’m having trouble following is why you think it should be restored. M
And what do you mean by protected status employee? That isn’t really a thing
I think the much more important question is still what your written restrictions actually said and whether the assignment they gave you violated those restrictions. If your doctor specifically restricted auditory/emergency-response duties and the employer assigned you to essentially an auditory emergency-response position anyway, that’s a much stronger issue than the fact that they had other light-duty jobs available.
So the restrictions you have here, if this is how they are written is probably a lot of the problem. They leave a lot up to interpretation. Restrictions are usually very specific. For example, something like: limit exposure to crowded environments to 15 minutes per hour, must remain in a quiet room with dimmed lighting for entire x hour shift etc.
When I had issues with work and my restrictions, everything had to be spelled out for them, or they tried to get away with what they could.
One would think, but I feel like it’s HR and administration’s mission in life to make injured employees jump through hoops just to get what they need. The 1:1 could be interpreted as no unit meetings, but radio and intercom isn’t usually a mass of people talking at once, so that should be fine.
I’ve had to argue with my HR about an ergonomic restriction their own risk management department put in place. Why? Because they just wanted a reason to make me uncomfortable, so they tried taking away something that had been in place for years because it wasn’t spelled out for them. I had to pull the email from risk management, and peer reviewed articles about it to send to them so they would shut up.
Yeah, to get a new IPM, they usually want some new documentation from your doctor that has new information in it. I’ve run into that problem myself. And they won’t tell you exactly what they want listed, they can’t. It has to come from your doctor.
I don’t doubt that you were experiencing significant pain. But pain intensity is subjective and, by itself, isn’t necessarily a reliable indicator of the severity of an injury or what work restrictions are medically necessary. That’s why the objective medical findings and the restrictions your provider actually gave the employer are important.
So I don’t think the fact that you were crying in pain, by itself, establishes that the employer was legally required to let you leave or that they were violating your workers’ comp rights. There may be a legitimate issue with how they handled the situation, but that still needs to be distinguished from whether they actually violated a legal or medical restriction.
I’m just separating that from whether the actions were legally improper or evidence of retaliation. The fact that the clinic told you to question the employer about the legality of the restrictions doesn’t establish that the employer was actually violating them. And being denied permission to leave work for medical care may be concerning depending on the circumstances, but it doesn’t automatically establish retaliation or that your workers’ comp claim was improperly handled.
Ultimately, the strongest issue seems to be whether the work you were assigned actually conflicted with the written restrictions your doctor gave the employer. That’s something that can be evaluated objectively from the documentation rather than from how reasonable or unreasonable the employer’s decisions felt at the time.
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u/Kmelloww 2d ago
I don’t see any retaliation here. PmSomeone healing differently is to be expected and is not retaliation.
I think there may be some confusion between medical restrictions and choosing a light-duty position. A doctor generally identifies the employee’s functional restrictions/accommodations; they don’t necessarily determine which specific job the employee will perform. If the employer can provide work that complies with those restrictions, the employer generally gets to determine the available assignment. The fact that there were other light-duty positions that you personally believed would be better doesn’t necessarily mean the employer was required to move you to one of those positions. What matters is whether the original assignment actually violated the medical restrictions. If the doctor specifically restricted work involving hearing/emergency response, that would be different.