Increasing workday hours held to adversely affect employee leave credits

Increasing workday hours held to adversely affect employee leave credits
Nagy v Board, Sup. Ct., Conn, #16003

Connecticut’s Supreme Court ruled that increasing the workday hours of state employees from seven hours to eight hours per day “devaluates” their accrued annual and sick leave credits. The remedy: increase the value of the employees’ annual and sick leave credits pro rata to the increase in their workday.

Two state assistant attorney generals, Robert A. Nagy and Hugh Barber, sued Connecticut contending that their standard seven-hour workday had been gradually lengthened to eight hours and this resulted in the devaluation of their previously earned leave accruals. The basic argument advanced by Connecticut: the relevant law provided for granting, and using, vacation and sick leave in “hour units” and therefore employees were to be charged on an “hour for hour” bases regardless of the employees’ rate of leave credit accumulation.

Nagy and Barber, on the other hand, contended that Connecticut’s interpretation resulted in their having to use eight hours of credit to cover a day of absence despite the fact that they had previously been limited to accruing credits based on a seven-hour workday: that is, they had accrued a day of credit equated to seven hours of leave time but were now required to use eight hours of leave time credit if they were absent for a day.

The court agreed and in effect held that Nagy and Barber were being “overcharged” leave credits for each “eight-hour day” of absence under the circumstances. It directed Connecticut to correct the situation.
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