🗓️ Attendance, Sick Time, and Vacation: Know Your Rights

Reliable attendance is important — but so is your health, your rest, and your right to time off. A union-backed contract ensures that attendance and time-off policies are clear, fair, and consistently enforced, not subject to management interpretation or sudden changes.

Here’s how your sick leave, vacation, and attendance policies work under the union framework:

🌴 Vacation Time: Your Earned Time Off

• Vacation time rolls over year to year — your unused time is never lost. Under the current agreement, this amount is capped at 40 hours. If you don't use it, you lose it.
  
  

• Vacation bids are awarded by seniority, not "first come, first served", ensuring long-term employees get fair access to preferred dates.
  
  

• Once your vacation request is submitted and signed as received by management, they have 5 scheduled working days to approve or deny it.
  ➤ If they don’t respond within that time, the request is automatically approved.
  
  

• Vacation sharing is allowed in accordance with Costco’s internal policy, allowing employees to help each other during times of need.
  
  

✅ This ensures vacation time is respected and fairly distributed — not denied without cause or lost due to management delay.

🤒 Sick Time: Respecting Your Health

• Employees accrue 88 hours of sick time annually. The current agreement is capped at 80 hours.

• Employees are allowed to be absent due to illness or injury for up to 30 days without affecting their 88-hour annual sick time accumulation.
  
  

• If you're injured on the job and sent home or to a doctor:
  ➤ You’re paid for the rest of the day without having to use sick time.
  
  

• Using sick time without any remaining hours in your bank is not immediately subject to discipline:
  
  

  • Discipline only begins after the 4th violation.  Under the current agreement, it begins after the 2nd violation.
    
    

  • Consecutive sick days count as one instance, not multiple.
    
    

✅ This policy recognizes that employees get sick, accidents happen, and no one should be punished for protecting their health or following medical advice.

⏱️ Fair and Transparent Attendance Rules

With a union contract in place:

• Attendance rules are clearly defined and consistently applied
  
  

• There's no guessing game about “unspoken” expectations or changing enforcement
  
  

• Absences tied to legitimate sick time usage or job injuries are protected, not punished
  
  

⚖️ Protection, Not Punishment

Union-negotiated attendance and time-off policies are built around one principle:

You shouldn't have to choose between your job and your well-being.

Whether you're planning a vacation or waking up sick, you’re protected by clear rules that management must follow — not vague promises or selective enforcement.