Delaware Employment Law Blog

This FMLA Update briefly reviews the second new type of FMLA leave offered to servicemembers and their families, Military-Caregiver Leave.

The two new FMLA leave types are designed to protect members of the Armed Forces and their families. Both types of leave enable a family member of a servicemember to take protected leave in two circumstances. The first, Active Duty Leave, was discussed in an earlier post. The second, is known as Military-Caregiver Leave. This new protection grants time off to the family member to care for a related servicemember who is ill or injured due to active duty.

• Employees may take an unprecedented 26 weeks of FMLA leave when a spouse, parent, child, or other blood relative for whom they are "next of kin" incurs a serious injury or illness on active duty in the Armed Forces.

• This 26 week total includes regular FMLA leave.

• Leave may be taken intermittently, but must be completed in a 12-month period.

• This is a one-time leave entitlement.

• "Next of kin" is an entirely new category of family member; it applies only to this specific type of leave.

• "Serious injury or illness" is much broader than the typical serious health condition; it applies only to this specific type of leave. Your speaker will provide a detailed definition.

• As with other FMLA leave, employers may require employees to take this type of leave concurrently with paid leave such as vacation, personal, or sick leave.

• Employers may require certification of servicemember’s health condition.

The FMLA now provides two completely new categories of leave for employees who are related to a servicemember who is called to active duty or injured in the military.

The first type of leave is triggered when the employee's relative is called to active duty. It is designed to enable servicemembers' family to get FMLA time off to make the arrangements necessary for the servicemember's departure. Below is a short summary of the need-to-know points for this first type of new FMLA leave.

Active-Duty Leave:

• Covers employees who have a spouse, parent, or child who is on or has been called to active duty in the Armed Forces. These workers may take up to 12 weeks of FMLA leave when they experience "any qualifying exigency." While “qualifying exigency" is yet to be defined by DOL, but it probably will include -- at a minimum -- covering necessary family and childcare responsibilities of the servicemember when that family member is called to active duty.

• Employees who request this type of leave are subject to most of the same requirements as other forms of FMLA leave, including employee eligibility and notice requirements, maintenance of benefits, and job reinstatement.

• Employers may require certification that the employee’s family member is on active military duty in accordance with guidance to be provided by the Secretary of Labor.

• Employers should grant these leave requests liberally until DOL defines the term "qualifying exigency".

Our Annual Seminar for Employers was held today at the Chase Center on the Riverfront in Wilmington, Delaware. The attendance at the seminar was our best ever, with more than 130 of Delaware's best human resource professionals, labor relations specialists, senior managers, and small business owners.

Our many thanks to The Honorable Mary Pat Thynge, who spoke candidly about the federal mediation process. Her comments were direct and insightful for everyone, including for the attorneys!

Another thanks to all of the attendees who completed and submitted a survey at the end of the day. We're looking forward to reviewing your comments. Our objective is to make the seminar as effective and enjoyable as possible. Your opinion really tells us what we can do to better to maximize the client experience. We are especially interested to learn what topics most interest you for future seminars. If you were in attendance today but did not have an opportunity to submit an evaluation, just let us know and we'll send you one that can be completed and returned electronically--no stamp necessary!

Again, thank you to all of our clients, colleagues, and new friends, who gave us your attention and participation for a very full day on a variety of employment-law topics.

Now that President Bush has signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which amends the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), employers must update their FMLA postings.

Under the FMLA, all covered employers are required to display and keep displayed a poster prepared by the Department of Labor summarizing the major provisions of The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and telling employees how to file a complaint. The poster must be displayed in a conspicuous place where employees and applicants for employment can see it. A poster must be displayed at all locations even if there are no eligible employees.

A copy of the standard FMLA poster prepared by the Department (WH 1420) is available for posting in the workplace at the DOL's website. The poster is also available in Spanish.

The DOL has also published a single-page insert poster, which includes the NDAA amendment. The insert is also available at the DOL's website. It's available here for download and use.

F-M-L-A.

Four little letters that strike terror in the hearts of HR Managers around the country. And it's not for want of trying. Employers want to comply--they really do. But the FMLA doesn't make it easy. Enacted with good intentions, the statute and its enforcement regulations have become one of the biggest employer complaints. Business groups have been calling for a substantial revision of the "FMLA Regs" for some time. The Regs have made compliance cumbersome and difficult to truly understand. Unfortunately, they have also enabled the statute to be grossly misused by not-so-well-intended employees.

On February 8th, the Department of Labor took a major step towards an answer to the cries of employers and business-protection organizations by publishing new proposed regulations. Getting here has been a long time in the making. In 1996 and again in 2001, the DOL published studies on how the FMLA was being administered. Several decisions from the Supreme Court and countless lower court rulings have also had a great impact on how the Regs have been interpreted. And, in 2006, the DOL posted a Request for Information (RFI), in response to which it received 15,000 public comments, which were summarized in the DOL's June 2007 Report on the RFI.

The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) is intended to be the culmination of these sources of comment and feedback.

At this stage of the rulemaking process, the proposed Regs are open for comment until April 11, 2008. Comments can be made online through the Federal eRulemaking Portal. After the commenting period closes, the DOL will review the comments and, at some point, publish new regulations.

Employers are encouraged to post their comments to the proposed regs as we work towards a clarified and improved set of FMLA rules.

On January 28, 2008, President Bush signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2008 (NDAA). One section of the NDAA is an amendment to the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA). The NDAA became effective immediately following the President's signature. The Department of Labor (DOL) has not issued regulations, though. Until they do, the DOL announced that it will not look to enforce the Act so long as employers are complying "in good faith."

And what exactly is "good faith" mean in this context? A likely starting point are the FMLA regulations. The two Acts are similar in purpose--both dealing with protected leave. By using the FMLA standards for notice and certification requirements, employers have a solid starting point for applying the NDAA.

And just what does the NDAA provide? There are similarities and differences between the two:

1. Like the FMLA, the NDAA provides for protected leave.

2. But the FMLA's provisions are expanded to include a “spouse, son, daughter, parent, or next of kin” of a "member of the Armed Forces."

3. Instead of the 12 weeks' leave provided by the FMLA, the NDAA guarantees employees can take up to 26 workweeks of leave.

4. And, though not a tremendously signficant expansion, the NDAA does not borrow the FMLA's "serious-medical-condition" language. Instead, the NDAA can be employed to care for a military family member, "who is undergoing medical treatment, recuperation, or therapy, is otherwise in outpatient status, or is otherwise on the temporary disability retired list, for a serious injury or illness.”

As complicated as the FMLA has been in application, there is now another element with similar-but-different requirements. HR Professionals should be sure to keep up with these changes as the new law continues to develop.