She is currently being paid by her job even though not there. The other employees are donating their vacation time back to the company so that it can continue to pay her while she travels around on the Deny Justice For Zimmerman tour.
Yes, and she will need to claim that time off/pay as income, and pay taxes on it.
It's interesting to note that most government agencies set a limit on the amount of time you can take off from work for emergencies, family illnesses, deaths, etc. They've thrown it out the window for her. They also limit you to the amount of time you can accrue. I retired from NY State in 2003. At that time, you could only accrue 1000 hours of sick leave, and if I remember correctly, 6 weeks of vacation. Once you reached those limits, you could not earn anymore time until you used some of it to get the numbers down. She's being given 34 weeks of leave...something no other employee gets the benefit of. And, they've set a terrible precedent. Are they going to refuse the next person who has a similar thing happen in their family?