Yesterday, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) protested new Bush administration regulations that she says undermine the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) with the release of a letter urging the Obama-Biden transition team to correct the new regulations. The FMLA allows workers to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for family members or to recover from their own medical conditions while their health benefits continue and their jobs are held open.
When the new regulations were announced over the weekend, most reports focused on the fact that they would expand FMLA access for military families. It allows workers to take up to 26 weeks off each year to care for family members seriously injured in the military.
Maloney argues that the regulations may jeopardize workers’ medical privacy and make it less likely FMLA will actually be used. According to the National Partnership for Women and Families, the new regulations grant employers more direct access to the health care information of workers and their family members. Workers will have less time to give notice of their need for leave while employers get more time to let them know whether the request for leave has been approved. Even once leave is approved, it will be more difficult for workers to use their accrued paid leave (such as paid vacation) while on FMLA leave, making it impossible for some workers to take FMLA leave at all.
In her letter to the transition team, Maloney said, “While the new regulations include positive steps to expand access to FMLA leave for members of our armed forces, they also include provisions that would undermine access to leave for millions of hardworking Americans.” She asks the President-elect’s transition team to look at “how we may expeditiously redress any new regulations that undermine access to FMLA leave.”
Not all are critical of the new regulations. For example, business owners welcome the new requirement that workers notify employers before they miss work to care for family members or tend to their own health concerns.
Currently, FMLA is interpreted to allow people to take off and inform their employers as many as two days after the fact.
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