What you don’t know can hurt you. No, that is way too alarmist. How about what you do know can help you! To add one more acronym to your ever
expanding vocabulary, KC-130, DFAS, VT-2, and now FMLA. The Family and Medical Leave Act was first
passed in 1993 to help employees who were ill or who had an ill family
member. In 2012 the Act was amended to
include two entitlements to benefit military families.
There are very specific rules to even qualify for FMLA. First, the employer has to be covered. Public
agencies and all schools, regardless of the number of employees, are covered
under the FMLA. Private sector employers
with 50 or more employees are covered, including joint-employer situations like
employee leasing.
Next, the employee has to qualify for coverage. You must work for a covered employer. You must have worked for the employer for at
least 12 months (not necessarily consecutively). You must have at least 1,250 hours of service
for the covered employer in the 12 months immediately preceding the leave. And you must work at a location where the
employer has at least 50 employees within a 75 mile radius. More simply put, if you work for a big enough
company, have been there at least a year, and work at least 25 hours a week on
average, you will likely be eligible for FMLA.
If you and your employer are covered under the FMLA rules,
you may be eligible to take up to 12 workweeks of leave in a 12 month period
for one or more of the following reasons:
birth of a child or placement of a child with the employee for adoption
or foster care; to care for a spouse, child or parent who has a serious health
condition; for your own serious health condition. And the new provision adds: for any qualifying exigency arising out of
the fact that a spouse, child or parent is a military member on covered active
duty or call to covered active duty status.
Qualifying exi-what? It
means, a thing. A situation, a
circumstance. OK for real, an exigency
is that which is required in a particular situation, typically needing
immediate attention. The leave is there
for military spouses or family members to address common issues that arise when
a service member gets deployed. Some
examples are appointments for making financial and legal arrangements, military
sponsored functions, and arranging for alternative childcare.
Military Caregiver Leave is another new provision and it is
longer. You still have to be eligible
(50 employees, at least 1 year and at least 1250 hours) but Military Caregiver
Leave allows employees who are the spouse, child or parent of a covered service
member to take up to 26 weeks of leave in a 12 month period to care for the
service member who is undergoing medical treatment, recuperation or therapy
etc. for a serious injury or illness incurred or aggravated in the line of
duty. This provision applies to the
families of members of both the active duty and reserve components of the Armed
Forces.
There are a couple of important things to note about
FMLA. The 12 weeks (or 26 weeks) of
leave does not have to be taken all at once.
It can be taken intermittently.
So if your pre-deployment appointments are spread over many days, weeks
or months, you can take the leave when you need it. Same thing for caring for yourself or a sick
family member, it doesn’t have to be taken all at the same time.
Perhaps even an even more important fact, FMLA has nothing to do with pay, it is only a
job holder. 12 weeks of leave, doesn’t
mean 12 weeks of getting paid! It just
means that the employee must be restored to his or her original job or to an
equivalent job with equivalent pay, benefits and other terms of
employment. Your employer may require
you to use your accrued paid leave to run concurrently (at the same time) as
your FMLA leave. So you may get paid for
part of it depending on how much vacation and sick time you have
available. Your employer is also
required to maintain your benefits as if you were still there.
So now that you have the basic facts, if you wish to use
FMLA, go talk to your Human Resources Department for specifics about how your
organization handles this type of leave.
There are also fact sheets available on the US Department of Labor
website. They can be found here http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs28.pdf
and here http://www.dol.gov/whd/fmla/MilitaryFLProvisions.htm.
