Here’s a question from the client inquiry line this past week, and it pops up often enough that I figured I would share:
Q: An employee on maternity leave contacted us two months into leave that she will not be returning to work at the end of FMLA leave (which now is one month away).
Q: One of our employees will be absent for a serious health condition. However, the employee prefers to use his accrued sick days instead of FMLA leave. He has enough sick time to cover the absence. In this situation, can the employee choose not to take FMLA leave, either because he has not specifically asked
Q: An employee who recently returned from FMLA leave claims that a portion of his leave of absence should not count against his FMLA entitlement because he responded to a number of work-related e-mails and telephone calls while he was out. Can we still count this time as FMLA leave?
A: I have fielded this
Q: Can an Employer Deny FMLA Leave to An Employee Who Is Not Yet Eligible to Take Leave?
A. It depends, particularly after a federal appellate court handed down a ruling on this very issue last week.
The underlying story is straightforward: On October 5, 2008, Kathryn Pereda began working for Brookdale, which operates senior
In a flurry of activity at the end of 2011, several employers contacted me to determine whether the DOL notice and certification forms still were valid, even though they contain an expiration date of December 31, 2011. In short, employers may continue to use the DOL’s FMLA forms, although consider our suggestions below before using
When it comes to the holidays, FMLA administration can be most difficult — both in terms of employee absences and how to calculate them. As I covered last month, the FMLA regulations provide very specific rules for calculating an employee’s FMLA leave for a holiday or when the employer is shut down because of
Q. We provide our employees “non-FMLA” leave after they have worked for us for six months. They are given up to six weeks off during that time if it can be certified by a physician. Since these employees are not eligible for FMLA leave at this point, can we credit the time they took off against their
Q. We employ an FLSA-exempt employee who has been certified for intermittent FMLA leave for migraine headaches. He averages two to three intermittent absences per month. Normally, I would calculate the employee’s total FMLA allotment as 480 FMLA hours (12 weeks x 40 hrs/wk), but he claims he should be entitled to 600 FMLA hours because
Q. We terminated an employee who has been reinstated by an arbitrator with full back pay. Now, he has requested FMLA leave. Are we obligated to provide leave even though he has not worked 1,250 hours in the previous 12 months?
A. When determining whether an employee has worked the requisite 1,250 hours in the previous
Q. One of our employees has asked for leave to care for a family member in another state. Does the travel time to and from the family member count as part of the FMLA leave?
A. This clearly is a grey area in the law at present. Very few courts have given us guidance as