The Family and Medical Leave Act: history, purpose, and impact

Family Medical Leave Act gives the right to eligible employees to get unpaid and job protected leave from their employers for their family and medical reasons. According to FMLA if employees are eligible then they can take 12 workweeks leaves in a year. Employees take these leave if they are facing serious health problems. Under this Act employers are required to give unpaid leave to employees for family and medical reasons in order to create balance between work and family.

History of FMLA

In the starting of 20th century, many labor organizers and social reformers acknowledged that there must be some laws and regulations which should address the issues of employee illnesses and family responsibilities. So after World War II many European nations came up with ideas to make such laws. They made different groups and started putting pressure on the members of congress to make laws that protect female employee's rights; labor rights, family life rights and labor medical rights passed legislation that required organizations to give leave to employees who were seriously ill. At that time these proposals were totally opposed by business lobbying groups because that they believed that it would create a negative impact on the productivity of the organizations. So to address all these issues FMLA was passed on 5th February 1993 and it was signed by former U.S. president Clinton. This Act is equally beneficial for both employees and employers.

FMLA was implemented in 1993 as a new labor law to fulfill the needs of the workforce. This Act includes disability leave, medical costs and insurance coverage. The main objective of this act was to create balance between work and family responsibilities. This law also provides employees luxurious leave rights than leave under federal law (The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993. 2004).

Since 1993, there have been numbers of changes proposed in this Act such as lowering the establishment size of the organization, increasing the number of reasons for leave, enhancing the definition of serious health conditions, restraining the use of irregular leave to give benefit to employers, increasing the duration of leave etc. But none of these changes have yet been implemented (Galinsky, Bond, Sakai, Kim and Giuntoli, 2008).

Major Areas of Responsibility and Main Purpose

The main purpose of FMLA is to protect the family integrity and promote stability and economic security of families. This law also protects employees from losing their jobs because history shows that employees were fired because of taking 3 to 4 weeks sick leave. Another main purpose of this law was to stop the discrimination in the workplace particularly discrimination on the basis of gender. Previously, in the past women who wanted to have a child had to sacrifice her career because organizations were not allowing them to have leaves. But now because of FMLA every woman can raise her family without giving up her career.

The main reason of creating this Act was that in the past when employees made request for leave then majority of the companies denied and there are occasions when employees were even fired for taking family and medical leave. So in order to protect the rights of employees this Act was passed in 1993. This Act applies to all local, federal organizations, educational institutes, public agencies and private organizations. This law enables employees to care for themselves and for family members and remove the fear of job loss and loss of benefits. Some of the organizations are also implementing paid family leave insurance program. This Act only applies to organizations which have 50 or more than 50 employees but in some companies the minimum requirement is 25 employees.

It is commonly seen in organizations that they cut the medical benefits of employees who are on leave so FMLA offers protection to employees and guarantees employees that they can take family and medical leave up to 12 weeks in a year.

Every employee has some family responsibilities so FMLA helps employees to take time off from work to fulfill their family responsibilities (Asher, and Lenhoff, 2001)

Eligibility

In order to get FMLA benefits and to become eligible for FMLA, employees must have one year experience of working in the same organization and must worked 1250 hours for that organization. If the employees have worked less than 1250 hours with that employers/organization then they are not eligible to entitle such leave benefits. If employees have short-term illness then they are not eligible to take leave as well as they are ineligible to take leave for routine medical checkup. It is the responsibility of HR department of the organization to follow the FMLA guidelines (Brody, and Brito, 2007).

Benefits provided by FMLA to Employers

It is a general perception that FMLA only gives benefits to employees and doesn't provide any benefit to organizations. But this is totally wrong because there are no laws in this world which overwhelm businesses. It is correct that FMLA protects the rights of employees but on the other hand it is also protecting the rights organizations/employers. These laws are just to make standards in business environment and to create uniformity among all the organizations. If the organizations are offering good benefits to employees then the employee retention ratio will be high because one of the best ways of attracting employees is to give them different benefits. Some companies are also providing additional benefits than FMLA to attract more effective employees. FMLA allows both organizations and employees to work together and find out the solutions that are beneficial and suitable for both. Under FMLA organizations are required to keep records like notice of leave, certification, employee's eligibility etc. If an organization would satisfy the needs of employees and take care of his family then productivity of the employees would increase as well. So there is no doubt that FMLA would help in improving the overall productivity of the organization.

Employees are required to provide following documents while applying for FMLA leave:

Medical certificate

Medical opinions

Timely reports during the period of FMLA leave.

To get proper benefits of FMLA, employees must use their paid sick leave before applying for FMLA so that you can save your FMLA leave for any emergency. But if employees want to save their paid leave for other purposes then they use these unpaid leave first. In case of planned leaves, employees should give a notice of 30 days to the management. It is the right of every employee to inquire about FMLA leave.

Key employees of the organization are not eligible for FMLA leave. Key employees are those employees whose annual salary is more than $130,000 or own more than 5% of the business.

Future Policy Considerations for HR Department

According to FMLA if husband and wife are working in the same company then they can't take leave together but they can take simultaneous leaves of 12 weeks. Employees have full right to complaint against organization in the department of labor if organization denies to an employee. However, HR department should allow husband and wife to take leave together in situations when their children are seriously ill or hospitalized.