New regulations under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) for 2009 require workers to follow their companies’ standard reporting procedures when they take unscheduled, intermittent time off under the act.

The change in the regulations follow the U.S. Labor Department’s release of a 182-page review of the FMLA finding, among other things, that unscheduled, intermittent time off is one of the major concerns of employers throughout the U.S.

The FMLA in its current form cannot prohibit workers with a serious health condition from taking leave that is sporadic and unscheduled. Workers may take just an hour or two of FMLA leave in a day, without the need to announce it in advance, depending upon their health condition.

Under the federal FMLA, workers are entitled to as much as 12 weeks annually of unpaid and job-protected leave for a serious health condition or at the birth of a child.

As the law now stands, a worker with sufficiently severe pregnancy-related nausea and vomiting (“morning sickness”) may take the unpaid time off for partial days. The employer has the right to require a doctor’s certification verifying the severity of the condition. Once the doctor’s certification has been received, however, the worker may take off whatever time is necessary within the 12-week annual limit. Because the illness is sporadic and irregular, the employee obviously need not schedule time off in advance.

This scenario can be compared to the worker who must take two hours of FMLA a week for physical therapy. The regular nature of these treatments means that the employee could, in fact, schedule the time in advance.

Sporadic FMLA time off counts toward an employee’s 12-week total. In the case of the pregnant employee with severe morning sickness, if she accumulated two weeks of FMLA time, she would be entitled to 10 weeks of leave at the birth of her baby.

The employer must maintain a worker’s health insurance during FMLA leave.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 3:13 am and is filed under FMLA - Family Medical Leave Acts, Labor & Employment Laws. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.