Background: I’m on PWD but I work part time. CERB doesn’t effect disability payments but I still have to report it.
Ok not too long after Covid 19 hit I got sick. I work in a retirement home (independent living and privately owned) so of course I couldn’t go to work. After two weeks of quarantine I still wasn’t better I was coughing up blood (not a ton but still…). I tried calling the help line so many times but couldn’t get through. I spoke to my doctor and was told they were not testing people for Covid at that time unless you were severe enough to need hospitalization or had traveled to a high risk area. His advice was to pretty much just wait until I was better. Then literally right after I started feeling better I got sick again. I spoke to my doctor again and he said if I wasn’t having severe symptoms and in particular issues with breathing then he couldn’t do anything. So I never got an answer on whether or not I had Covid but that doesn’t matter because if I’m sick at.all I cannot work. Rules are rules.
So I collected CERB one time even though I was actually off for over two months. Other than getting sick twice my medical conditions require various therapies (physical therapy, massage therapy, chiropractor) and without those being available to me it affects how I’m able to do my job. So my inability to work during this time was definitely Covid related but like I said I only applied for CERB once.
The issue I have is that I realized my work sent me sick pay when I was away. This falls into when I received the CERB payment. I never asked for it which really confused me. The manager who sent in our timesheets for payroll during this time is denying she did anything… I honestly call BS on that because 1: I’ve done that job before so I know what has to be done and 2: the payroll person doesn’t even know me so how could she know if I was sick or not? Plus I have a coworker who has been off because she’s diabetic and hasn’t received anything. To get sick pay you have to be marked down as sick. I have been having issues with this manager (which includes stuff like her freaking out on me for calling in sick and then telling me when I come back I will probably be losing most of my hours, even though I have seniority over the other staff, because “Other people were nice enough to stay on and help us”) and I’m not the only one (she made my diabetic coworker cry).
Now I’m being told by this manager that if I received sick pay I didn’t qualify for CERB and I need to pay it back? I read online that if you were on sick leave for OTHER reasons (not covid related) then you don’t qualify, which makes sense. But I WAS away because of Covid related reasons. Like I said regardless of whether or not I actually had it I got sick after this all started and because of the nature of my job I absolutely could not go to work I also know, via information I was receiving, that they were NOT properly following protocol during this time and I have a right to refuse to work if I feel it’s unsafe.