Legislation was introduced earlier this month in Congress that would expand the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA).
The bill, dubbed the Parental Bereavement Act, would amend the FMLA to provide leave for employees after the death of a child.
The leave would work similar to standard FMLA leave, with just one major change: The leave could only be taken in one block, unless an employer agreed to grant a worker intermittent leave.
The bill would apply only to employers with 50 or more employees.
Currently under the FMLA, employees cannot take job-protected leave upon the death of a child.
The Parental Bereavement Act is just the latest in a long line of legislative initiatives aimed at amending the FMLA that have been introduced in Congress over the past year.
Prognosis: While some of those other initiatives have had limited success, many FMLA experts, like labor and employment law attorney Jeff Nowak, say the Bereavement Act has a better shot a passage than some of the other bills.
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