The U.S. Department of Labor’s final regulations on the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) offer bad news for workers, but mostly good news for military families.  We are delighted that military families will finally get some of the additional support they need and deserve.  We fought hard to expand the FMLA to extend unpaid family and medical leave for up to six months for the families of wounded military personnel, and to allow military families to use FMLA leave to help ease the strain of a family member’s deployment.  With these regulations in place, military families should be able to use the leave they need when they need it.  It is welcome and badly needed.  This is the first-ever expansion of the FMLA, but we hope and expect that it will not be the last. 

However, the new FMLA regulations for workers take us in the wrong direction, and are harmful and unnecessary.  They will restrict access to protections workers have relied on for 15 years – protections they need now more than ever, with the economy in deep trouble and families struggling terribly.  Put simply, the Bush Administration is making it more difficult for employees to take FMLA leave.

The FMLA is a success story.  Over the last 15 years, workers have used it more than 100 million times to take the leave they needed without putting their jobs at risk.  There was no reason to restrict it, and no recent scientific study indicated a need for these regulations.  We should expand the FMLA so more workers can take leave for more reasons, and so those who can’t afford to miss a paycheck can take the leave they need to care for a family member or recover from their own illness.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 17th, 2008 at 3:24 pm and is filed under Uncategorized .