State and federal leave laws: How recent legislative changes have complicated leave administration
✍ Scribed by David C. Lindsay; Leah M. Moore
- Book ID
- 102197750
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2011
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 95 KB
- Volume
- 38
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0745-7790
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Recent amendments to state and federal family-and-medicalleave laws have created new challenges for employers. Although many state laws mimic federal law in most respects, the latest additions to the federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), along with changes to state laws, have significantly complicated the picture. Now as companies navigate compliance with a myriad of state and federal rules, they face the real possibility they will be required to provide multiple extended leaves of absence to a single employee, even within the same year.
Due to differing eligibility criteria for the various laws, companies can quickly find themselves in situations in which they are responsible for consecutive leaves, in some cases totaling nearly 60 weeks. The intersection of state and federal law can result in significant productivity loss, operations disruption, and, with requirements to maintain insurance benefits throughout relevant leaves of absence, the expense of carrying an employee on benefit plans for extended periods of time. The emerging differences in state-and federal-law requirements can be very tricky for employers with employees in multiple locations. Human resources professionals must keep abreast of current state-law developments across the nation and must calculate leaves of absence using procedures that are often esoteric and difficult to apply. Moreover, creating a single policy that is adaptable to multiple locations has become significantly more difficult. Gone are the days when an employee handbook could simply and