Yesterday, we looked at some of the proposed changes to the federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) in areas relating to military leave. Today, a look at the other proposed changes, courtesy of Mark Schickman and Cathleen Yonahara, both attorneys at Freeland Cooper & Foreman LLP in San Francisco.
For yesterday’s installment, click here.
Finding Forms
A change is proposed for how the DOL makes optional-use forms and notices available. Currently, they’re in the appendices to the regulations. The DOL wants to remove them and make them available online only, reasoning that they will be updated faster online and there will be less confusion about which forms are the most current.
Other Nonmilitary Proposed Changes
The proposed regulations also clarify how the FMLA applies to airline flight crew members and flight attendants, who work in an industry with a unique system of setting their work hours.
The rules explain how to calculate the required number of hours an airline flight employee must have worked in a 12-month period to become eligible for FMLA leave.
Confused about an important leave-related issue? Don’t be.
Finally, the DOL wants to delete a 2009 provision that lets employers use different increments of FMLA leave at different times of the day in certain situations. The agency acknowledges there was some confusion on this provision and proposes to follow the more general rule of using the employer’s shortest increment of leave time to calculate FMLA leave usage.
The DOL also wants to clarify a very narrow rule that allows employers to delay reinstating an employee if it’s physically impossible for the worker to return to the job mid-shift (as with a very controlled work environment such as a clean room). Some employers may have been applying this rule when it was inconvenient but not impossible to reinstate the employee mid-shift.
Leave Mistakes: Better Prevented Than Remedied
The best way out of a sticky leave-related dispute is to avoid getting embroiled in it in the first place. And to do that, you need current, complete info on the web of state and federal leave laws that apply to you in California—as well as clear explanations of how they interact with one another.
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Notice Requirements for CFRA and FMLA: California Labor Laws today!