Congress passed the Family and Medical Leave Act (P.L. 103-3, 107 Stat. 6) to help people who were stressed about trying to balance the competing demands of work and family. The law was signed by President William J. Clinton on February 5, 1993. Experts often refer to the legislation as the "FMLA."
Changes taking place in the American family over the past decades led to the need for the FMLA. With an increasing number of single-parent families and two-parent families in which both parents work, the birth of a child or a serious family illness often placed workers in the position of having to choose between keeping their jobs or providing care to a family member.
Women were especially burdened because they have traditionally had the role of caregiver. Not only have parents sometimes lost time from work to attend to their families, but their own medical problems could lead to missed work days as well. These absences from work caused problems with employers who needed a reliable work force; too many absences due to illness, therefore, could get an employee fired. The FMLA allows employees to take unpaid leaves of absence from their jobs in these kinds of situations. It provides a minimum level of job security for people trying to balance the demands of their jobs with family obligations.
Section 2601 of the FMLA states the purpose of the law:
... to balance the demands of the workplace with the needs of families, to promote the stability and economic security of families, and to promote the national interests in preserving family integrity ... to entitle employees to take reasonable leave for medical reasons, for the birth or adoption of a child, and for the care of a child, spouse, or parent who has a serious health condition ... to promote the goal of equal employment opportunity for men and women.
Not everyone was in favor passing the FMLA; legislators extensively debated the proposed bill in Congress before it was passed. While many legislators thought the FMLA was needed to help families, some argued the FMLA would unnecessarily interfere with relationships between employers and employees and would hurt small businesses. Others argued that the leaves of absence taken by some workers would place unfair burdens of additional work on others who remained on the job.
The Supreme Court has noted that the power of Congress to pass the FMLA comes from two different sections of the U.S. Constitution: the Commerce Clause and the Fourteenth Amendment. The Commerce Clause gives Congress the power to regulate businesses; the Fourteenth Amendment protects citizens from discrimination, including discrimination on the basis of gender. Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment gives Congress the power to adopt laws to enforce that Amendment.
Details of the Law
The FMLA allows employees to take up to twelve weeks of unpaid leave in any twelve-month period for the birth or adoption of a child, to care for a family member, or in the event of the employee's own serious health problems. The employee can take the leave in a continuous block or by working on a reduced schedule. In some circumstances the employee can take the leave on an intermittent, or off-and-on, basis. Finally, the employee can take leave under the FMLA in addition to other paid time off that might be available, such as vacation time.
An employee must, however, follow certain procedures in order to take FMLA leave. If the employee knows in advance that he or she will need a leave, he or she must give the employer thirty days notice. If the situation is an emergency, the employee must notify the employer as soon as it is practical; employers can also require that the employee submit written medical certification to verify any claimed health condition.
While an employee is on leave, the employer must maintain benefits for the individual such as group health care. If the employee was making payments for such benefits, the employee must continue those payments during the leave. At the end of the leave, the employee is entitled to return to the same job or to an equivalent job with the employer.
Not all employees are entitled to take leaves under the FMLA. The law only covers employees who have been working for their employers for at least twelve months and who have worked for at least 1,250 hours. State and local government employees are covered by the law, while private employers must offer the FMLA if they have fifty or more employees for each work day for at least twenty work weeks during the year.
Litigation and Controversy
Workers have sued employers under the FMLA in a number of contexts. Examples of the kinds of issues courts have decided include whether an employer retaliated against an employee for taking a FMLA leave, if the job given to an employee upon return from leave was an equivalent job, whether an employee gave proper notice to an employer prior to a leave, and if an illness qualified as a "serious illness" under the FMLA.
The U.S. Supreme Court considered a case under the FMLA for the first time in 2002. In Ragsdale v. Wolverine World Wide, Inc., the Department of Labor penalized an employer who failed to tell an employee the time she had taken off as unpaid leave counted as FMLA leave. The Supreme Court, however, ruled that the penalty was not valid. Even though the Department of Labor has the power to supervise the implementation of the FMLA, this case suggested it still was not completely clear in what it could and could not do in order to enforce this law.
In the 2003 case Nevada Department of Human Resources v. Hibbs, the Supreme Court upheld Congress's power to allow private suits against the states before the FMLA. The Court said that the FMLA protected against such discrimination in employment. Although the FMLA addresses some concerns employees have in trying to balance work with family, the benefits it gives are limited. The FMLA does not provide for paid leave; so the only workers who can take advantage of the law are those who can afford to take an unpaid leave. Some people take the position the FMLA should provide for paid leaves and that Congress should expand it to cover jobs where twenty or more workers are employed—rather than limiting it to employers with fifty or more employees. Experts also suggest that the FMLA should cover other family situations, such as doctor's appointments and parent-teacher conferences, situations that often require parents to take time off from work. It is likely that this debate over just how much the government should provide to families will continue well into the future.
Bibliography
Dunston, Robert, and Frank Robins. FMLA: A Practical Guide to Implementing the FMLA. College and University Professional Association for Human Resources, 1994.
Dunston, Robert, and Frank Robins. Practical Guide to Implementing the FMLA: 1996Supplement. College and University Professional Association for Human Resources, 1996.
Schwartz, Robert M. The FMLA Handbook: A Union Guide to the FMLA. Work Rights >Project, 2001.
Wever, Kirsten S. "Changing Work in America: The Family and Medical Leave Act."
Williams, Anne H. FMLA Leave: A Guide Through the Legal Labyrinth. M. Lee Smith Publishers and Printers, 2001.
Internet Resources
U.S. Department of Justice. Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) Fact Sheet.
U.S. Department of Labor. Family and Medical Leave Act Fact Sheet.
