Labor Department Proposes New Regulations For FMLA, Officials Say

Main Category: Women's Health / Gynecology
Also Included In: Public Health;  Pediatrics / Children's Health
Article Date: 28 Jan 2008 - 5:00 PDT

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Department of Labor officials on Thursday announced that they have proposed new regulations governing the Family and Medical Leave Act to the White House's Office of Management and Budget for approval, the New York Times reports (Greenhouse, New York Times, 1/25). The federal law currently requires businesses with 50 or more workers to offer employees who have worked at the business for one year -- or 1,250 hours -- 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for an infant (Daily Women's Health Policy Report, 12/5/07). The law also requires that unpaid leave be available for serious health conditions, to care for a newly adopted child, or to care for a seriously ill spouse, child or parent.

Currently, employees can take two days off before requesting leave, but the proposed rule generally would require workers to call in to request leave before taking it, the Times reports. The department also is drafting regulations to put into effect changes that Congress approved earlier this month, including leave for the families of wounded veterans or leave for "any qualifying exigency" related to a family member's call-up to active duty or deployment, according to the Times (New York Times, 1/25). According to the AP/Google.com, areas of the law likely to see changes include medical certification for FMLA leave, unscheduled intermittent leave for people claiming chronic health conditions, and employee awareness of their rights under the law.

Seven million people took FMLA leave in 2005. Since the passage of the law in 1993, more than 50 million U.S. residents have taken unpaid leave to care for an infant or seriously ill family member or to recover from their own illness, according to the National Partnership for Women and Families (Holland, AP/Google.com, 1/24).

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Victoria Lipnic, assistant labor secretary for employment standards, said the proposed regulations seek to clarify medical certification procedures that can lead to disagreements over whether employees had done enough to prove they qualified for leave. The proposed regulations would allow companies to require physicians to recertify annually that an employee has a serious health condition, Lipnic said, adding that the proposed changes were modest and did not go as far as the business community had hoped. Marc Freedman, director of labor law policy for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said, "There's a problem with how the department has defined serious health conditions because that has opened things up to virtually any condition now being eligible. We would have liked to see changes there."

Debra Ness, president of the National Partnership, said she could not comment on the proposed regulations because they have not been released but added, "We know from anecdotal experience and from the research we've done that the law is working well for employers and employees" (New York Times, 1/25). Ness said, "I'm worried about any effort to cut back or weaken the protections of this law. ... This is a time where we should be working to expand the protections in place for working families" (AP/Google.com, 1/24).

Reprinted with kind permission from http://www.nationalpartnership.org. You can view the entire Daily Women's Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery here. The Daily Women's Health Policy Report is a free service of the National Partnership for Women & Families, published by The Advisory Board Company.

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