The Family Medical Leave Act FMLA

• published: 05 May 2015
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FMLA administration can be very complicated. Not only must your employee meet certain qualifications to be eligible, but there are processes to be followed as well. KPA’s Kathryn Carlson will explain the intricacies of FMLA and how it interacts with COBRA, ADA, and more. This webinar will cover: When are employees eligible? Employer responsibilities Overlapping state and federal laws Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA) The relationship and overlap between COBRA and FMLA What is the FMLA exactly? The Family Medical Leave Act was passed in 1993. Out of all of the federal employment laws, FMLA is one of the most popular and beneficial to employees. It's been proven over the past 11 to 12 years that it isn't imposing an undue hardship in employers, but certainly employers need to be very cognizant of their rights and responsibilities. A very popular question is can I fire somebody who's on FMLA? Or somebody goes on leave and we recognize that we don't want them back, how do we handle it? It's important that the training around FMLA is not just senior management and the human resources department. Because supervisors deal directly with the employee, it's critical that supervisors have at least a basic understanding. Who is covered by the Family Medical Leave Act? Private and public employers, not just government entities, but any private employer that employees 50 or more employees for each working day, during each of 20 or more calendar work weeks in the proceeding or current calendar year. That's a lot of math. If you feel like doing it, so that you can say, I actually only have 49 employees for 19 of the days. You can figure out how to avoid it. As a rule of thumb, most employers say if I have 50 or more employees of the majority of the year, I'm covered. It also extends in a 75 mile radius. By that I mean if you have 2 or more locations under common ownership, whether they're owned by an individual or a corporate entity and they're within a 75 mile radius, they're employees are combined. If you have 35 employees at one location and 20 miles down the road, you had 40 employees, both groups, if they're with common ownership of the two dealerships would be covered by the FMLA. Common ownership is typically defined as one entity. Again, that could be an individual. It can be corporation. It can be a limited partnership. But something that's recognized as a business entity that owns 51% or more of the location. The requirements, we're going to go through these in quite a bit of detail, but the basic requirements of the FMLA are that an employer must reinstate the employee to the same or equivalent position upon conclusion of the FMLA. An equivalent does not mean that you bring them in at the same salary, but reduce their duty. It needs to be equivalent. You can't demote somebody, but keep paying them, which is bad economic policy and practice anyway. It doesn't have to be the exact same position. So if during the 12 week leave that the individual requested, you move another individual into the position and they are doing fine and you want to do a reorganization. When the person comes back, bring them into an equivalent position. The same or equivalent job duties, same and equivalent salary. You must also continue health benefits at the same level as prior to the start of the FMLA. Other benefits are governed by company policy. Whether you allow people to continue to accrue vacation, or sick leave, or paid holidays, anything that is not specific to healthcare coverage, you can define by policy. Start, because you're going to hear this about 12 times during the webinar today, but here's your first one. It's very important that you document your own FLMA policy and have it separate from your leave policy. One of the conundrums I see, sometimes, employers try put them together, and they can be in your same section of your handbook, the policies can be right next to each other, but they try to meld it all together. That becomes a very confusing to the employee. You may have your own leave policies related to paid time off, vacation pay, sick pay, you may even offer unpaid leave. If you're big enough to qualify for FMLA, FMLA becomes your unpaid leave. If you're too small for FMLA, unpaid leave is a policy that's a tough economic decision for most employers. You want to be sure that you have a documented policy, so there's total clarity, in what you're going to do during FMLA leave. It also, your policy, will clarify what the employee needs to do, how do they request the leave, how is the leave granted, what's required for doctor certification, how do they return to work. Those are all things that the policy will clarify. The good news is, because I always like to give out a little bonus for the webinars that I conduct, is we'll be sending you a sample FMLA policy as part of your information that Rebecca sends out later today.