A NYS Employee’s Personal Travel to a COVID-19-Restricted State is NOT Essential in Business and at Work

At this writing, the list of NYS COVID-19 restricted-travel states is up to 43 states:

COVID-19

CDC recently released updated recommendations for how people can protect themselves and their communities from respiratory viruses, including COVID-19.

As a quick refresher: those NYS residents who travel to states on the NYS COVID-19 Restricted-Travel states list are required to quarantine for 14 days after their return from the COVID-19 Restricted-Travel state. Obviously, the quarantine is in addition to the paid time off / vacation an employee would take during their voluntary travel, as I outlined in this earlier post.

In that post, I advised employers to consider adding these questions to their PTO request forms:

• Do you plan on traveling to a state on NYS’s COVID-19-Restricted-Travel list?
• If so: are you able to work remotely during the mandatory 14-day quarantine upon your return?
• If so: please be prepared to take a COVID-19 test after your 14-day quarantine and before you can enter our building(s).

By the way, as I’ve also mentioned in earlier posts:  if the employee’s personal travel to a NYS COVID-19 Restricted-State will cause an undue hardship on the employer with regard to their prolonged time away from work, the employer has every right to refuse to approve the paid time off / vacation time to be used for COVID-19 Restricted-State personal travel.

I’ve helped a few New York Forward essential business clients navigate a new variation on the above theme: employees who (mistakenly) conclude that because they work for a business on the New York Forward essential business list, that any personal travel on their part to a NYS Restricted-Travel state is exempt from the 14-day quarantine upon their return from vacation. That conclusion is not factual. Only essential business travel within very narrow definitions to NYS Restricted-Travel states (and required by the essential business) is eligible for consideration of a modified quarantine period.

As a matter of fact, one employee who reached out to their county Department of Health was informed of the above; and that the Department of Health would contact them every day during their 14-day quarantine upon their return to NYS.

How are you handling employee paid time off requests for travel to NYS COVID-19 Restricted-Travel states, in business and at work?