Hello!

I have a question about vacation accrual during a short term leave due to illness.

We have an employee who was off sick for almost 9 months. She decided to resign instead of come back to work. When she first went on leave, she used up any vacation time that was accrued, and so she stopped accruing vacation at that time.

When she resigned, she asked for her vacation to be paid out to her but we let her know that she doesn’t have any vacation pay because it was used up before she took her leave. She actually used more than she accrued but we’re absorbing the cost.

I tried looking online for information and its very confusing to me. This section suggests that it should be continuous, so the vacation should still be accrued during her leave? Does that mean we owe her vacation pay for the 8 and a half months, even though she did not work during that time?

https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/employment-business/employment-standards-advice/employment-standards/forms-resources/igm/esa-part-6-section-56

Some other info:
We are a BC based company and we don’t have short term top ups.
We asked the employee several times during her leave over email to apply for LTD, but she refused.
She did provide doctors notes whenever asked with return to work dates.

Let me know if you need any other information!

Thank you in advance for your help.