Family Medical Leave Act
The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) gives employees twelve weeks off for a worker’s own serious health condition, to bond with a new child, or to care for a seriously ill child, spouse or parent. The FMLA guarantees unpaid job-protected leave, including the maintenance of seniority and benefits and continuation of group health insurance coverage. The worker must be returned to the same or equivalent job at the end of their leave. The FMLA applies to all public sector employees and to private sector employees in businesses of 50 or more workers within a 75-mile radius. Additionally, employees must work for their employer for at least 12 months and have worked at least 1,250 hours in the year preceding the leave.
Commentary
Chamber of Commerce Was Wrong About Family and Medical Leave Law
Cry Wolf Quotes
We must also recognize that mandated benefits may limit the ability of some employers to provide other benefits of importance to their employees. The number of innovative benefit plans will continue to grow as employers endeavor to attract and keep skilled workers. Mandated benefits raise the risk of stifling the development of such innovative benefit plans.
This disturbing trend is nothing short of Europeanization -- a polite term for socialism.
It's just a bad piece of legislation…This continuous tendency to try to mandate benefit policy creates a bad business environment for Tennessee and the U.S. as a whole…[benefits] should be left up to the employers and employees to determine.
[John] Motley [of the NFIB] warned that business owners should not be fooled by small-business exemption [in the FMLA]. ‘That’s only temporary,’ he assured them, adding that he sponsors ‘stated aim’ was ‘paid leave for all employees.’
Evidence
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A Workable Balance: Report to Congress on Family and Medical Leave Policies
A tenth anniversary study of the Family Medical Leave Act's effects.
