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Employers Must Post Military Family Leave Notice

February 11th, 2008 Posted by Amelia

The U.S. Department of Labor is requiring every employer to post a notice of the new Military Family Leave signed into law as part of the NDAA. This notice is required effective immediately, and penalties apply to employers who do not post it prominently.

As of January 28, 2008, families of National Guard and Reserve personnel on active duty will be eligible to take up to 26 weeks of unpaid, job-protected FMLA leave.

This provision comes as a part of HR 4986 the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which President George W. Bush signed into law on January 28, 2008. This law expands the FMLA (Family Medical and Leave Act) from 12 weeks to 26 weeks for military families.

The law went into effect immediately, so companies are required to grant leave to family members to care for an injured soldier. Previously, FMLA’s definition of family member was limited to parent, spouse or child, but the 2008 NDAA includes “next of kin”, which could include aunts, uncles, cousins and in-laws to be eligible for FMLA leave.

In addition to the usual labor law posters, every employer must post the Military Family Leave Notice in a prominent place where it is visible to all employees. This notice is in addition to other state and federal labor law posters that every employer is required to display.

The point of the expanded FMLA is to allow a parent, daughter, son or spouse to care for a member of active military, National Guard or Reserve under medical treatment. Included are mental or physical therapy, outpatient treatments and caring for military personnel on temporary disability as the result of illness or injury.

In addition, the new NDAA allows family members to take FMLA leave to stand in for soldier called to active duty. The family member can stand in for the soldier on deployment as a substitute for persons under that soldier’s care. For example, a parent of a deployed soldier could take FMLA leave to help care for that soldier’s ill spouse, or to take care of the healthy children.

Enforcing the new law comes under the U. S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division. Unfortunately, all the regulations of the NDAA have not yet been finalized. Until the Secretary of Labor issues final regulations, the NDAA isn’t technically in effect. Until that time, the U. S. Department of Labor expects employers to “act in good faith” and grant FMLA leave to eligible military families.

Prior to the enactment of the FMLA in 1993, a worker who developed a serious illness could be out of a job. Companies at that time determined how an employee could use leave for medical reasons on a case-by case basis. Individual company policy varied from business to business. In many situations, if a worker missed more than a couple of weeks because of major surgery or heart attack, the company simply fired him or her.

In the beginning of 2008, the United States enacted the National Defense Authorization Act to expand the FMLA (Family and Medical Leave Act).

The FMLA was passed in 1993 and has not incurred a major expansion until the passage of the NDAA 2008. A federal law, FMLA broke new ground in requiring employers to provide job-protected, unpaid leave for employees with serious health issues. To be covered by FMLA, a company must have 50 or more workers in a 75 mile radius, and employees must have worked for that company for a certain amount of time.

Upon returning from leave, the worker was guaranteed to have a job. If the same job wasn’t available, then the company had to place the worker in a similar position with comparable salary, benefits and working conditions.

Under this ground-breaking federal law, employees were entitled to take up to 12 weeks of job-protected, unpaid leave to tend to health issues. These health issues could be their own, or those of a parent, spouse or child. In addition to caring for an illness, FMLA leave could be used to care for a newborn child, a newly adopted child, or a newly fostered child under the age of 18.

NDAA 2008 will expand the parameters of the existing FMLA, but the details are not yet know. The U. S. Department of Labor is finalizing the regulations and will publish the results.