Workers And Employers Split On FMLA

Following a request for comments about the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA), the Employment Standards Administration/Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has released a report summarizing some of the positive and negative experiences workers and employers have had with the law.

In an official request for information (RFI) issued on December 1, 2006, the DOL asked the public to submit accounts of their experiences with the FMLA and to comment on the effectiveness of current FMLA regulations. The RFI resulted in more than 15,000 comments, including brief e-mails, detailed personal accounts from employees who had taken advantage of the leave, and complex analyses of the legal and economic issues surrounding the FMLA.

Under the provisions of the FMLA, an employee who has worked for a minimum of one year for a company with 50 or more employees is generally entitled to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave during a 12-month period when suffering from a serious medical condition or caring for a newborn, a newly adopted child, or an immediate family member who is seriously ill. According to DOL estimates, just over half of all workers in the U.S. qualify for FMLA benefits, and between 6 and 13 million workers took leave under the act in 2005.

Generally, the responses showed that most employees and employers are not experiencing noteworthy problems related to the FMLA, the report said. Researchers noted, however, that employees often expressed a desire for greater leave entitlement, while many employers raised concerns about their ability to manage business operations and control attendance, particularly when workers take unscheduled or intermittent leave.

DOL officials noted that the employers most concerned about the impact of the FMLA on their business operations tend to be in industries with a strong time-sensitive component, such as delivery, transportation, telecommunications, health care, public safety, and manufacturing. Employers also complained about suspected abuses of the FMLA entitlement and about the medical certification process. In addition, researchers said, the comments demonstrated that many employees do not fully understand the procedures they must follow when seeking leave.

“The 15,000 comments from workers, employers and others attest to the importance of family and medical leave for America’s caregiving workforce,” said Victoria A. Lipnic, assistant secretary of labor for the department’s Employment Standards Administration.

“While family and medical leave is widely supported, we also heard from many workers and employers that there are challenges with the way certain aspects are being administered,” Lipnic added. “This report provides information for a fuller discussion about how some of the key FMLA provisions and their interpretations have played out in the workplace.”

A number of labor and industry groups reacted to the publication of the report. John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, observed that the Labor Department report included no proposals for changing the regulations that implement the FMLA, but instead merely called for a fuller discussion of how the FMLA has affected the workplace.

Sweeney called for any such discussion to include support for paid family and medical leave, as well as paid sick leave. “The U.S. lags behind virtually every other country in the world in provision of these key family values programs, and we must move quickly to provide a more meaningful balance to working families,” Sweeney said.

But Jason Straczewski, director of employment and labor policy at the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), commented that the DOL report “clearly shows there are legitimate business concerns when it comes to granting FMLA leave. It is a compelling record of the challenges employers face every day in managing the workplace.”

According to Straczewski, the NAM has long called upon the DOL to revise FMLA regulations, particularly with respect to notice requirements, defining serious health conditions, and the use of intermittent leave.