What rights do furloughed employees have?
The bottom line
A furlough generally means workers’ hours have been cut or eliminated temporarily, or requires that they take a certain amount of unpaid time off. Furloughed workers are still considered active employees and eligible for some benefits. While furlough doesn’t have a technical legal meaning, employers—especially since the onset of the pandemic—are using the term to signal that it’s a status where employees can expect to maintain their health care benefits and eventually be called back to work. Still, a furlough can lead to termination.
The details
A furlough does not offer job security, though employers choosing to put employees on such leave typically intend to bring them back.
“Employers are operating in a lot of uncertainty right now, where they truly believed what would be two to three months then became eight months, and they’re now having to forecast business needs in a different environment,” says Stephanie Lewis, an attorney with employment law firm Jackson Lewis in Greenville, S.C. “We are seeing companies that are having to convert furloughs into layoffs.”
Furloughed workers, while still considered active employees, aren’t paid for time they don’t work. If, however, employers ask employees to work at any point during a furlough, workers must be paid in accordance with their regular salary or hourly rate, says attorney Mark Carey of Carey & Associates, an employment law firm in Southport, Conn.
In the meantime, furloughed employees can and should apply for unemployment benefits. All state unemployment systems were modified to make such workers eligible to collect unemployment.
