I have one simple question I am hoping you can answer. If not, maybe you can direct me to the best person to talk to. Long story short, my employer requires you to use your earned vacation time FIRST when ordered sick or in the hospital. We do have long and short term disability available for those who want to pay for it and most of us do. The disability insurance facilitater requests 8 days out before calling to make a claim but the owner of the company requires us to use up our vacation before anything else. Is this legal? It doesn't seem right and fair and everyone is up in arms about it. I just want to know if its legal. Any information you can give me would be of great value. Thank you so much for your time.

To my knowledge, there is no law that prohibits the employer from requiring an employee to use paid time off before any leave commences.

It is not only legal, it is quite common.