FAMILY AND MEDICAL LEAVE ACT EXTENDED
TO MILITARY AS BUSH CONSIDERS RULES CHANGES

In a win for working women and for military families, the Family and Medical Leave Act has been extended to military families, proponents said.

The extension comes just as another FMLA development occurred with the potential to undercut the 15-year-old law’s impact: The Labor Department sent proposed new rules for implementing FMLA to the anti-worker and anti-woman GOP Bush regime’s Office of Management and Budget for review.

And while she cannot cite chapter and verse of DOL’s proposed changes, much less what OMB’s regulatory affairs office will produce in a month or two, Deven McGraw of the National Partnership for Women and Families says she received reports that one change might make it harder for workers to take “intermittent leave” for such things as doctors’ appointments or rushing to school to pick up their sick kids.

The defense bill Bush signed in late January extends FMLA to families of wounded service members, an important provision during war and at a time when more service personnel are surviving more-traumatic injuries than ever before. It’s also the first extension of the FMLA law in 15 years, says NPWF President Deborah Ness.

The changes in FMLA rules are important because they can limit how anyone can use the law. FMLA says any worker in a company that employs at least 50 people shall have 12 weeks of unpaid leave yearly to care for himself, herself or ill family members, and shall have the right to reclaim his or her job afterwards.

But the leave is not paid. Business, led by the Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, could not get a GOP-run Congress to repeal FMLA. So for eight years, they’ve demanded Bush’s DOL draft new rules to make it harder for workers to use the leave.

NPWF and the labor movement, leaders in the long fight to enact the law, are fighting the business schemes to change the rules. On another front, Ness said, they’re campaigning for legislation by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) to enact paid family leave on top of the unpaid leave.

In an interview at a screening of a film promoting the union movement’s and NPWF’s campaign to promote awareness among women of the need to get PAP smears and specialized testing to check for cervical cancer, McGraw listed several possible ways NPWF had heard of DOL trying to change family leave rules:

• Requiring workers to give advance notice of when they want “intermittent leave.” That would bar workers from taking intermittent leave for a short time, such as for a doctor’s appointment or when a child becomes sick at school. Intermittent leave often lasts only a few hours. Another potential change, McGraw said, would require intermittent leave to be at least half a day.
  
  
• Requiring annual medical exams for workers who must take family leave for someone with a “serious” health condition that is continuous over a period of time.
  
  
• No changes to present language saying family leave is available for “serious health conditions.” Business wanted a specific list of serious conditions, barring family and medical leave for other conditions not on the list, “to cut back on workers’ rights in the interests of management,” she explained.
  
  
• Instituting penalties for firms that break the family leave law. The Supreme Court several years ago told DOL to come up with a rule penalizing law-breaking firms.

The FMLA’s original author, Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), and Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) inserted the extension of FMLA to military families into the defense bill. “This can make a real difference for military families that have made great sacrifices and are under enormous stress,” Ness said. “It is urgently needed and long overdue. Family and medical leave is important to all families facing serious health problems. Lawmakers should look to expand the leave this law provides.”