The Department of Labor just proposed rules that would make some major changes to the Family Medical Leave Act. They’d affect how just about every employer handles FMLA leave.

Here’s what the proposed rules would do:

Change FMLA calculation requirements

The biggest proposed change: Companies would be required to track FMLA leave in the smallest increments their payroll systems use to track work time.

So if your payroll system tracks time worked in five-minute increments, you’ll be required to track FMLA time in five-minute increments.

Sounds familiar? It should. This is how employers used to be required to calculate FMLA leave before the rules were changed in 2009. The current rules allow employers to track FMLA leave in the same manner they track other forms of leave, most often in one-hour increments.

Change ‘physical impossibility’ provision

The DOL also wants to change the rule that allowed employers to delay a workers’ reinstatement from FMLA when it was physically impossible for the employee to return to work in the middle of his or her shift.

Example: If a flight attendant took two hours of FMLA leave due to a migraine and
missed his flight, the airline could dock him a full day of FMLA time because it was physically impossible for him to go back to work — because his assigned plane was already airborne.

The DOL says employers are misinterpreting this rule by applying it in circumstances where it’s merely inconvenient for them to reinstate an employee mid-shift.

That won’t happen under the proposed rules. They state delaying a worker’s reinstatement will only be permitted in the most limited circumstances where it is, in fact, physically impossible to allow a worker to return to work in his/her position — or an equivalent position.

Change military leave provisions

The proposed rules also make major changes to military family leave, including:

• Expanding caregiver leave so it can be taken to care for veterans discharged within the past five years
• Allowing caregiver leave to be taken for a pre-existing injury or illness that was aggravated in the line of duty
• Extending exigency leave to family members of the Regular Armed forces
• Requiring that service members be deployed to a foreign country in order for their family members to qualify for exigency leave, and
• Extending the amount of time an employee can take during a military family member’s “rest and recuperation” period from 5 to 15 days.

Employers have until the end of March to comment on the proposed rules here.

If these changes become official, they will no doubt call for employers to update their FMLA policies and forms.

Info: The DOL’s Fact Sheet on the proposed rules is available here.

Tags: caregiver leave, exigency leave, Family Medical Leave Act, FMLA calculation, military leave, physical impossibility, proposed rules