DOL Publishes Proposed Amendments to FMLA
Just today, the Department of Labor published long-awaited proposed amendments to its Family and Medical Leave Act regulations, which will be open for public comment until April 11, 2008. The proposed amendments contain a number of changes to many of the provisions that have plagued employers since the FMLA was enacted. An initial read suggests that many of the changes are organizational in nature and are designed to make the regulations easier to understand. The amendments also clean up some of the issues relating to attendance bonuses, mandatory overtime, and medical certification as well as other issues. That said, only minimal help appears to be on the way with respect to the serious health condition definition and the intermittent leave provisions. There is also at least one setback for employers: the proposed regulations would no longer permit employers to count time spent on light duty work toward exhaustion of FMLA leave. Once we’ve digested the entire submission from the Department of Labor, we will report back with more detailed analysis of the most significant changes.
