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Connecticut NDAA

February 29th, 2008 Posted by Amelia

Thanks to recent federal legislation, relatives of soldiers who are going away to active duty may now take more than 6 months of unpaid leave to help with family duties.

The time may be taken either to care for an injured soldier or to care for a child or sick member of the family.

The legislation is the NDAA, or National Defense Authorization Act of 2008. It passed January 28, 2008, and is effective immediately. The U.S. Department of Labor is making an effort to complete regulations stemming from this bill, and information will be released as it becomes available.

In the meantime, the Labor Department expects employers to make what it calls a “good faith effort” to comply.

The new Act essentially extends the time available through the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) to this qualifying group of employees to 26 weeks, rather than the usual 12 weeks. Unpaid leave under the FMLA is job-protected.

The expanded leave is largely for spouses, parents, sons or daughters of soldiers. Under some conditions however, even aunts, uncles and cousins may qualify to take the extended leave. That’s because the law permits a wounded soldier’s “next of kin” to take time off to care for him. Presumably, that is true even if the “next of kin” is a second or third cousin.

Spouses, daughters, parents, and sons may take up to 26 weeks if a family member is called up to active duty or will be deployed shortly. The expanded leave is likely to be used most by spouses of members of the Reserve or National Guard.

Under regular FMLA guidelines, qualifying workers can take the leave time to care for a sick child, parent, or spouse, or to help with a newborn, a newly adopted child, or a newly added foster child. The new regulations allow employees to take time to care for healthy children who would otherwise be cared for by the soldier who has been called up for active duty. It may still be used to care for a sick parent or child.

Families of injured soldiers were allowed to start taking the leave on January 28, 2008.

The regulations as they now stand allow employers to count paid leave as part of the 13 weeks of FMLA leave. Presumably, this rule will be the same for the 26 weeks of leave for military families.

The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA) was a major change for workers. For the first time, the law required employers to provide an employee with leave when he or she suffered from serious health problems. FMLA leave is unpaid, but job protected, meaning the worker is guaranteed the same or a similar job when he or she returns.

The only expansion of the law since its original passage is the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2008, which, among other things, increases leave time for relatives of military personnel on active duty. The U.S. Department of Labor is scrambling to complete regulations based on the NDAA, and few details are available yet.

The FMLA provides workers with a guaranteed 12 weeks of unpaid, job protected leave yearly. The time can be used if the employee is seriously ill. Workers can also use it to care for a member of the immediate family with an illness. By “immediate family” the law refers to spouses, children or parents, but not grandparents, in-laws, or siblings.

The law is meant to allow employees to care for a newborn child, a new foster child under 18 or a newly adopted child, thus its common designation as “maternity leave” or “paternity leave.”

Because the leave is job protected, workers must be given the same or a similar job when they return to work. If it is impossible to reinstate the worker in the original job, then it must be one with similar pay, conditions, duties, and benefits.

Employers are permitted, under some conditions, to count paid leave time — sick time or Paid Time Off (PTO) — against the 12 weeks of FMLA leave. But the employee must be notified in writing before the leave time begins.

The FMLA law applies to any company with 50 or more employees within a 75-mile radius. Some states have expanded that to include smaller firms. And some states have enlarged the coverage to include care for other relatives besides members of the immediate family. It remains to be seen if these same states will adopt NDAA for smaller companies.