FMLA Adoption

You get the phone call in the middle of the night. Your son or daughter has been in a serious accident and is hospitalized in critical condition. After several day’s they come home from the hospital with several broken bones and require your around the clock attention for the next eight to twelve weeks. You just got over a serious medical condition yourself which you acquired while on vacation and do not have any vacation time or sick time to take off. Do you have to quit your job? Can your employer terminate you for taking time off to be with your child? What options do you have? What can your employer do for you? Well, the answer lies in the Family and Medical Leave Act.

Employers are limited to what they are allowed to ask and employees are allotted time off before being required to provide medical documentation supporting their request for leave. These gaps in detail in the documentation of the Family Medical Leave Act are giving dishonest employees an opportunity to obtain time off without any due explanation. Sue Sumler from the Manufacturers' Alliance/MAPI explains the problems caused by a vague definition of serious health condition. "Because the definition of a 'Serious Health Condition' is vague, almost any¬one can find a physician to certify that they have a chronic condition that meets the definition. Many of this company's intermittent leaves are for migraine headaches. The physician certifies that migraines may occur at any time. Some employees approved for leave for migraine headaches miss four-five days a month and more. For some, it appears that FMLA has given them an extra 60 days off work."

As we move into the new millennium more and more employers are allowing, some are even encouraging, their employees to bring their newborn babies to work with them. This is probably one of the greatest changes in child care norms that this country has seen in the past 30 years. Once upon a time, when a woman had a baby she almost always quit her job to raise her child, depending on her husband to support her and her child. Then along came the idea of maternity leave. This is when a woman takes a certain amount of time off to be with newborn. Once this time period was up, the woman still had a job to go back to. This meant that women no longer had to rely on their husbands for support. Unfortunately it also

An employee took time off due to his wife giving birth prematurely. His requested time off was approved by his original manager as the employee qualified for FMLA since he has been with the company for two years and was for the care of his spouse. Under (1)”FMLA rules certain employees can be provided up to 12 weeks unpaid, job-protected leave per year. The employee must work for the company at least 12 months, have at least 1250 hours during the 12 months and the where the employee work, the company must employ at least 50 employees within 75 miles”.

The Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) was enacted to offer relief and protection to those workers

Human Resource Management professionals reported issues with “tracking/administering intermittent FMLA leave, determining the overall costs incurred while complying with the requirements of the FMLA and determining whether an intermittent serious health condition should be protected by the FMLA.” (Frincke, pg. 7) There are no statutes or policies in the FMLA that states the employee must furnish a doctor’s note, but many state regulations do require it. If there are any questions in regards to the seriousness of the employee’s condition, the employer can ask that documentation be provided if this requirement is made known before hand. There are also situations where an employer may dispute a doctor’s recommendation and they may require the employee to get a second opinion. The doctor will then have to determine that the duties of the employer’s job cannot be performed or the requested leave is medically necessary.

Although current federal and state level legislation guarantee some protections, these policies do not cover all new parents. Parents must have worked a minimum of 5 months while contributing to State Disability Insurance to receive 55% of their salary during 6 weeks of their parental leave, and must have worked with an employer for 1 year to quality for 12 weeks of unpaid leave (“About Paid Family Leave (PFL),” n.d.). Parental leave is not accessible to all adults in the United States because of these requirements, and therefore makes early parenting even more challenging for working adults. Nationally, the trend for mothers on maternal leave has stagnated, although the US economy has expanded (Zagorsky, 2017).

 Time off is also allowed for childbirth, adoption, and to care for a sick child or family member.

     The Family and Medical Leave Act was enacted by Congress on February 5, 1993, and it is public law 103-3. This law allows for a person to leave work in certain situations without losing his/her job. An eligible employees must have worked for the employer for at least 12 months and at least completed 1250 hours of service. An employee is able to leave work for up to 12 weeks for any of the following reasons: the employee expects a baby in his/her immediate family, the employee expects an adopted child in his/her immediate family, the employee has to take care of an ill family member which includes spouse, parent or his/her own children, and/or the employee has a serious medical

There are four reasons that an employee can claim FMLA. They are 1) for the birth and care for a newborn child; 2) for placement with the employee of a son or daughter for adoption or foster care; 3) to care for an immediate family

The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) provides specific employees with up to 12 weeks of protected leave. FMLA was created to help qualifying employees attend to important responsibilities by taking unpaid leave for certain family and medical reasons. FMLA promotes equal employment opportunities for both men and women. FMLA generally applies to all organizations with 50 or more employees.

The Family and Medical Aid Act (FLMA), of 1993, provides for 12 weeks of unpaid, job protected leave for certain specified events (8). Whilst one could refer to this as maternity or paternity leave if taken because of a pregnancy, this would not be strictly true. Where maternity and paternity leave are offered around the

An employee on FMLA leave is entitled to health benefits maintained while on leave as if the employee had continued to work instead of taking the leave. Since Congress passed the Family Medical Leave Act in (1193), it has been estimated that between twelve and twenty million workers have made good use of the right.

The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) entitles eligible employees of covered employers to take unpaid, job-protected leave for specified family and medical reasons. Some issues with FMLA include employee abuse and employer mishandling of its policies. Employees sometimes tend to misuse the benefits of FMLA. They take time off when it really does not warrant use of FMLA benefits. Employees use FMLA to take vacation days and not days due to the reason behind their FMLA claim. Another issue with FMLA is that employers do not follow proper FMLA protocols. Mangers can discourage workers from taking leave or request prohibited medical information or sometimes provide FMLA in situations where FMLA does not come into play. For all these reasons,

Upon complete satisfaction of all FMLA requirements, employers have the responsibility to provide up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to eligible employees. The single most important responsibility employers have in regards to FMLA is to ensure that employees come back to the same position or one of equivalent pay and task. Employers have the responsibility to ensure employees can take necessary time off from work to take care of their families or themselves and not worry about whether they will have a job to come back to after their leave expires.