Family medical leave act debate: limits or expansion
In early February, Patti Phillips sat by her daughter’s bedside and watched as she pulled a blanket to under her chin. Her 18-year-old daughter was just going to go to sleep for a little while.
She never woke up.
Stephanie Phillips had a type of bone cancer, and Patti says she was able to be at her daughter’s side the day she died — and throughout her years of treatment — because of a federal law that allows millions of Americans to take family leave without risking their jobs.
But now, a pitched battle is brewing over that 1993 law, the Family and Medical Leave Act. The Department of Labor is expected to come out shortly with proposals for revising parts of the law; some labor and family groups, such as the National Partnership for Women & Families, fear those changes will cause hard-won family leave protections to be lost.
Business groups say the current law is too vague and vulnerable to employee abuse.
Any changes to the FMLA have the potential to be a big issue, because millions have had illnesses or other life events that fall under FMLA’s umbrella. In an 18-month period in 1999 and 2000, nearly 24 million Americans took leave from work for an FMLA-covered reason, according to the Labor Department’s most recent figures.
No one knows what changes will be proposed. The Labor Department, which oversees the federal leave law, has the authority to make revisions, with a public comment process.
Among the possible alterations:
• What’s a serious illness? Leave can generally be taken for a serious illness, but groups wanting the law changed say people with minor health problems, such as a broken toe or a cold, are claiming they should get time off. Those groups want a more precise description of what would qualify as a serious illness.
But supporters of the current law say abuse is rare. They fear that efforts to redefine what qualifies as a serious illness could go too far.
• Occasional time off. The law currently allows employees to take time off in small chunks of time — say, a half hour one day to undergo radiation therapy, for example, or a few hours to see a doctor.
The problem? Business leaders say some unscrupulous employees are using the intermittent time off for bogus reasons.
• Proving an illness. A doctor can now sign off on a form and say that an employee has a serious illness, but employer groups say companies don’t have enough information to adequately judge whether such certification is really warranted. Some would like the ability to have a conversation with the doctor to reassure employers that the health complaint is legitimate.
The Family and Medical Leave Act was passed by Congress and signed by president Bill Clinton in 1993 after nearly 10 years of lobbying from family and labor groups such as the AFL-CIO. It provides eligible employees up to 12 weeks of job-protected leave for the serious illness of an employee or an immediate family member, or the birth or adoption of a child. Health insurance must also be continued.