Family Medical Leave Act (Aim and Benefits)

Family Medical Leave Act – Overview

Illnesses are unpredictable. This often creates enormous problems for workers without the facility of paid leave. This usually puts them in a dilemma whether to save their job or take care of their health or the health of a loved one. Such situations often cause apprehension regarding their next paycheck, too.

Although Congress passed a temporary emergency paid sick leave for family members to some workers, tens of thousands of other workers had been neglected. This also made the US the only country in the world that didn’t provide guaranteed paid leaves to employees.

The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA)

The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) is a labor law under which employers with over 50 employees on the roll are required to provide employees with unpaid leaves for serious family health situations. The US Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division handles all FMLA initiatives.

Family and Medical Leave Act

Family and Medical Leave Act

Employees can avail of these paid family medical leaves for pregnancy, adoption, foster care placement, military leave, or family and personal illnesses. The act also provides continued health insurance coverage and job security when the employee is on paid sick leave to attend to ill family members. This act aims to provide employees and their families with the time and money to deal with serious illnesses and emergencies and guide employers.

Benefits of the Family and Medical Leave Act

Under the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), an employee is assured of job security when taking extensive leaves to attend to personal or family matters. The law assures qualified employees up to 12 weeks of paid leave for childbirth, adoption, and family or personal illness.

This act also helps employees return to work after their leave of absence. If the particular job is unavailable, then the employer is bound to provide the employee with a job with equal pay and status.

To be eligible for benefits under FMLA, the employee should be employed by an employer with over 50 employees working within a 75-mile radius of the work site. The employee should have worked for the employee for at least 1,250 hours in the past 12 months.

Aim of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA)

The FMLA aims to assure workers of employment when they need to take a leave of absence for a significant number of days. This is an effort to allay the employee’s fears of choosing between their family or their jobs when they need to care for their spouses, children, parents, or dependents from extended family due to illness.

This act has greatly benefited single-parent households, especially for single mothers who are gainfully employed. Women play an extensive role in family health and are the primary caregivers in most households in America. For example, the act allows women to take leaves of absence in case of childbirth or to complete the adoption process, with the assurance of returning to their job at the end of the leave.

The act also considers men’s immense role in ensuring a harmonious household.

The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) aims to:

  • Creating a balance between work responsibilities and the needs of the employee’s family. This effectively promotes stability and financial security for their families and encourages national interests in ensuring family integrity.
  • Entitle employees to take sufficient medical leaves, such as for the birth of their child or adoption purposes, to take care of their child, spouse, parent, or any other dependent from their extended family who is suffering from severe health disorders.
  • Complete its purposes in a way that considers employers’ legitimate interest.
  • Accomplish these requirements in a way that is consistent with the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to minimize potential employee discrimination based on gender by assuring leaves for medical reasons are available without any cut in the usual pay scale.
  • Promote equal employment opportunities for men and women, according to relevant clauses in the Act.

Conclusion

The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) has been a boon for employees nationwide. The new amendment to the 1993 labor law has relieved thousands of workers’ worries about their employment when they are forced to take leaves of absence to attend to medical emergencies for themselves and their family members.

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