Legal beat: Family-leave law can be excuse for a day off
The Family and Medical Leave Act provides about 45 million workers with up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-guaranteed leave for childbirth, adoption, their own serious illness or that of a close family member.</br></br>It can also be a nifty way to skip work, as more than a few employees -- and their dismayed bosses -- have discovered.</br></br>Last December, for instance, so many flight attendants called in sick for family or personal reasons that Southwest Airlines had to cancel some flights for staffing reasons for the first time in its 22-year history. Constipation forced a Chicago Transit Authority bus driver to take covered medical leave -- for six weeks.</br></br>The final rules, which took effect in April, say a serious health condition can include an illness that incapacitates someone for more than three days, requires at least one visit to a health professional and leads to supervised, ongoing treatment such as a prescription drug. Thus, workers are invoking the law for relatively minor ailments, such as allergies, anxiety attacks, backaches, infected sinuses, nausea, tendonitis and hemorrhoids and vasectomies, according to several employers, unions and employment-law specialists.</br></br>"The FMLA has become the most powerful tool for the problem employee to avoid discharge" for excessive absenteeism, says David Block, a family leave expert at the law firm of Jackson, Lewis, Schnitzler & Krupman in New York. Congress isn't unconcerned. The rise in dubious absences since the FMLA took effect is costing AT&T Corp. and other big businesses "millions of dollars in lost productivity," says Marc Lampkin, a House Opportunities Committee staffer. The panel plans hearings about the law in September.