The FMLA’s newly proposed regulations are a serious attempt to address employer concerns and have already drawn criticism from unions and employee advocates. Through the new regulations, the Department of Labor (DOL), has addressed some of the most complained-of provisions, but not all.

The newly proposed regulations with contain provisions that:

• Fine-tune procedures regarding required notices, medical and fitness-for-duty certifications, and designation of leave

• Clarify the eligibility requirements for employees who are jointly employed

• Clarify when an employee’s inability to work overtime exhausts FMLA leave

• Establish that light duty does not exhaust FMLA leave

• Allow employers to deny bonuses (such as perfect attendance or hours worked awards) to employees who don’t qualify for them because they took FMLA leave

• Allow employers to require employees to comply with the terms and conditions of their paid leave policies in order to substitute paid leave for FMLA leave

• Allow employees and employers to voluntarily settle claims of past FMLA violations

• Provide very minimal clarification of the definition of a “serious health condition”

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.

Human Resource professionals see the Family & Medical Leave Act (”FMLA”) as a major compliance challenge. And it just never seems to get easier. Lately, the FMLA is back in the news. The Act has seen more legislative and regulatory action in the past few months than it has during the previous ten years.

On January 28, 2007, Congress expanded the scope of the Act to include two new types of military leave for families of servicemembers. Next, on February 11, 2008, the U.S. Department of Labor released its long-awaited proposed revisions to the FMLA regulations.

William W. Bowser and Scott Holt will be addressing these important changes at the May 13 meeting of the Delaware Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM). The meeting will begin at 5:30 p.m. at the Cavalier Country Club. Our presentation will focus on what you need to do now in response to these changes.

Online Registration for the meeting is available here. Directions to the event are available here.

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”.

Family and Medical Leave has hit New Jersey employers. The N.J. Senate passed legislation that would make the Garden State only the third state (after California and Washington) with state-sponsored paid family and medical leave. Governor Corzine said he intends to sign the bill, so employers should start preparing now.

The New Jersey Division of Civil Rights, the state agency charged with enforcing the bill, has posted a helpful Q&A on the NJ FMLA on its website.

The criteria for employee coverage will be the same as for coverage under the state’s unemployment compensation law. Employers are covered if they are covered under the New Jersey Temporary Disability Benefits law, that is, if they have one or more employees who earned at least $1,000 in the current or preceding calendar year. Employees will be entitled to benefits in the amount of two-thirds of their weekly pay, up to $524 per week, for up to six weeks in any 12-month period.

Benefits are payable for time off taken to care for a seriously ill family member, or in connection with childbirth or adoption. Benefits will be funded by an additional tax on employees of about $.48 per employee per week, beginning on January 1, 2009. Benefits will begin to be available on July 1, 2009.

The law does not include any job restoration guarantees, and provides that employers with fewer than 50 employees (who are not covered by the federal FMLA) will not be liable to a discharged employee.

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.

Last Night, I had the honor of presenting the Wallace N. Johnson Citizenship Award to Governor Ruth Ann Minner at the New Castle Chamber of Commerce Annual Dinner. The Governor, through the Delaware Cancer Consortium, has made fighting cancer a priority. As a result, Delaware’s cancer incidence rates are declining at four times the national average. Our death rate is declining at twice the national average.

While we are starting to turn the tide on cancer in Delaware, much remains to be done. Here are a couple of thoughts:

First, screening saves lives…and money. The earlier a cancer is detected, the better chance of survival. In fact, some screens can actually prevent a cancer from occurring. If that’s not enough to encourage screening, how about this? Early detected cancers are cheaper to treat. That’s what you call a win-win-win situation. As a result, employers should take an active role in encouraging their employees to get all appropriate cancer screenings. Have you thought about a floating screening day, so that employees can take off work to get a screen without losing pay?

Second, cancer happens. If your workplace hasn’t been touched by cancer yet, it will be. And, 80 percent of cancer survivors return to the workplace during or after treatment. Why not think about and plan for it now? Of course, you will have to meet your obligations under the FMLA and ADA, but there is so much more you can do. It all starts with talking with the employee with cancer. You should first discuss how much information they want to share with co-workers. Some employee will want to keep the diagnosis quiet while others will want to know everything they are going through with their co-workers. Next you can talk about what help do they need? Every employee will have different needs, but most will need some kind of help. For example, one may need meals cooked for her family. Another might need someone to watch his kids so that he can get treatment or just go to a movie. A human resources professional can help by organizing the workforce to meet an employee’s needs.

Third, knowledge is power. Most cancers are preventable. An employer can educate its workforce on simple ways to lower cancer risks like quitting smoking, exercising, using sun screen and eating healthy. Numerous non-profits, like the American Cancer Society, offer lunch time programs to provide such information.

The U.S. Department of Labor has created a web page covering its proposed changes to the FMLA. The web page contains the text of the proposed changes, FAQ’s, and information about how to submit comments.

According to the Department’s press release:

Proposed changes include increased notice obligations for employers so that employees will better understand their FMLA rights, while revising the employee notice rules to minimize workplace disruptions due to unscheduled FMLA absences. The proposal also contains technical changes to reflect decisions by the Supreme Court and lower courts. A new section addresses recently enacted legislation to expand the FMLA entitlement to 26 workweeks for certain military family members caring for a service member with a serious illness or injury.

You can link to the DOL’s website here.