Articles Posted in Family and Medical Leave

With four years of blogging under my belt, I have a pretty good sense of what may audience comes to expect from this labor and employment law blog:

  • typos
  • grammar errors
  • snark
  • “where does Eric find this stuff” posts

For today’s post, I don’t have enough hats to tip to the many readers who emailed me about this hella-crazy FMLA retaliation complaint. Continue reading

ADA and Burger King?!? Has someone been eating too many Whoppers? No. But I did spend a 20 minute Uber ride yesterday sucking down mustard packets.

Actually, the inspiration for this post comes from Seattle Attorney, Michael Harrington, who presented “The Wild, the Weird and the Wonderful FMLA/ADAAA Cases…And the Lessons for Employers!” with me yesterday at the Disability Management Employer Coalition (DMEC) FMLA/ADAAA Employer Compliance Conference.

(If you want a copy of our PPT, please email me. I got you.)

AKZF5oZ

This one goes out to all of you employees who are contemplating a claim against a former employer for violating the Family and Medical Leave Act.

Read this federal court opinion and make a mental note: when you voluntarily work from home, that’s not “leave” under the Family and Medical Leave Act. Yep, when you choose to work from home, and tell your employer that you are working from home that makes Ford Motor Company angry, you wouldn’t like it when Ford gets angry, your employer doesn’t need to offer you FMLA, or let you know that you qualify for FMLA. Continue reading

Oh, that collective sigh of relief of not receiving a daily email update yesterday from The Employer Handbook. (Yes, you can sign up to receive daily email alerts to my blog).

Folks, I’m sorry. Monday, I was a deadbeat; I didn’t pay my MailChimp bill. So, if you rely upon email to receive my daily blog posts, you missed out Monday on what was probably the post of the year definitely the post of the day.

But, today, I’m all paid up and back in MailChimp’s good graces. They even sent me a my own personal mailchimp. I named him Buddy.

Now where did I put my pills?

Ok, moving on… Continue reading

Yesterday, with my good buddies Casey Sipe and Jessica Miller-Merrell from Blogging4Jobs.com, I presented a webinar on the interplay between the Family and Medical Leave Act, state workers’ compensation laws, and the Americans with Disabilities Act. The key word in the last sentence being “interplay.”

(By the way, if you want to snag a copy of that webinar, drop me a line, and I’ll see what I can do about getting you a copy).

One point we emphasized during the webinar is that, for employees taking FMLA leave for their own serious health condition, companies need to have a plan to address the FMLA implications and the potential interplay — there’s that word again — with the ADA. Because, remember, leave may be a reasonable accommodation under the ADA. Continue reading

You wouldn’t want to make the same egregious mistake as a Michigan employer. After the jump, I’ll discuss the colossal screw-up and help you avoid it.

Don’t worry. I’ll wait and listen to some Foo Fighters while you go grab your FMLA policy.

[Two bad words near the end of the Foo Fighters song. So, if you’re going to play it at work. Well, don’t play it at work].

* * *

Continue reading

FMLAPierce.jpg

A gentle reminder that eligible employees can take leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act to care for an immediate family member (spouse, child, or parent — but not a parent “in-law”) with a serious health condition, like a bad respiratory illness that requires hospitalization.

Please send some good vibes to my little guy, Pierce.

Fact or Fiction?That’s right folks. It’s time for another edition of “Fact or Fiction” a/k/a “Quick Answers to Quick Questions” a/k/a QATQQ f/k/a “I don’t feel like writing a long blog post.”

(Indeed, today, I’m so damn lazy, that I’m republishing a post from last year)

One of your employees is currently using FMLA leave. Today, due to the winter storm, you’ve decided to close the office. 

“Doing What’s Right – Not Just What’s Legal”
Contact Information