Near the beginning of the pandemic, an employee requested unpaid leave to care for her two-year-old son—a child with a history of respiratory illness experiencing symptoms resembling COVID-19. But she never ended up taking FMLA leave. Instead, she used PTO on Monday and Tuesday. The next day (Wednesday) was a…
If you’ve got an HR-compliance sweet tooth, here is your FMLA nerd candy. Your favorite employment law, the Family and Medical Leave Act, entitles eligible employees of covered employers to take may take up to 12 workweeks of job-protected, unpaid leave in a 12-month period for various qualifying reasons. Employees…
This will all make sense in a minute if you keep reading. The plaintiff is dealt a tough hand. As the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals put it in this decision I read last night, the plaintiff was “dealt a tough hand.” In less than a month, her father fell…
After Sunday’s Philadelphia 76ers’ win over the Boston Celtics in Game 4 of the NBA playoffs, I didn’t think this week could get off to a better start. I was wrong. Yesterday, I was perusing the Wage and Hour Division section of the U.S. Department of Labor’s website because it’s…
The Family and Medical Leave Act guarantees eligible employees up to 12 workweeks of leave in a 12-month period for a qualifying reason, such as taking care of a parent with a serious health condition. Employers, on the other hand, cannot interfere with employees’ FMLA rights. But, are there circumstances…
If you haven’t done FMLA training for your supervisors, hopefully, this post will motivate you to get some on the calendar. The case I want to share with you today involves a lab tech with several disabilities. As they worsened, she was often late to work due to her disabilities.…
Grab your pearls for clutching, and let’s get into this recent federal court decision to find out. Last week, I talked about how having a signed arbitration agreement is generally a prerequisite to requiring an employee to arbitrate employment claims against the company. If you have a signed arbitration agreement,…
Thank you for indulging me a day off from blogging yesterday. It’s tough to bounce right back when a referee rips your heart out of your chest with a ridiculous penalty call late in the fourth quarter of arguably the best Super Bowl game of all time. At least I’m…
Employees are eligible for FMLA leave when they have worked for the employer for at least 12 months, have at least 1,250 hours of service for the employer during the 12-month period immediately preceding the leave, and work at a location where the employer has at least 50 employees within…
Blink twice if you know (or at least suspect) a poor-performing employee who complained about discrimination or sought leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act to insulate herself from discipline at work. I’m not saying that’s what the plaintiff did in this recent Eighth Circuit decision. But then again,…