You are required to notify your employer of planned leave at least 30 days ahead of the date you want the leave to begin. If your job requests medical documentation, you must get documentation from your doctor and give it to your employer within 15 calendar days.
Your employer is then required to notify you about your FMLA job protection, including when your protected leave starts and how long it extends. Some states do mandate paid leave, so be sure to research the protections available in your state. Or maybe it gets so bad that you do an inpatient stay at a hospital. If you are a covered person under the FMLA, you have the right to leave.
If you told your company about your depression, and they fire you while you are on leave, you have a disability discrimination and retaliation claim, as well as FMLA, claims interference and retaliation.
The same goes for pregnancy. If your company fires you while you are on pregnancy leave, you may have a case for pregnancy discrimination and retaliation and FMLA violations. The FMLA generally accompanies other types of employment claims, but it does not have to. You can sue under the Family and Medical Leave Act if your company discriminates or retaliates against you for taking leave.
To succeed on a claim for FMLA retaliation you must prove:. Looking at past cases helps illustrate how a judge might decide a case in the future. The law may seem clear. But what lawyers are trained to do is take the law and argue that its interpretation is in your favor. In this case, unfortunately, the lawyer for the employee was unsuccessful. The Plaintiff-employee person suing , Ms.
Allen, alleged that her company retaliated against her after she took FMLA leave. Allen took three leaves of absences during her employment with Nutrisystem. During her employment, Ms. Allen complained numerous times about her work environment. After Ms. Allen returned to work after her third FMLA leave, her company wrote her up three times.
These write-ups were for:. Her company fired her just two months after she returned from her third leave. The court found that being fired two months after requesting leave and coming back from leave was insufficient. That is, that her request for leave was too far removed from her firing. Interestingly, the court did not discuss her multiple write-ups after coming back from leave. One might argue that this is a bad fact. Her employers peppered her file with write-ups to set the record to eventually fire her.
This is a real case that happened. As you can see, even though this case appeared straightforward, it was not. There are always nuances in the statute. The statutory language is always subject to interpretation and argument over it. Good lawyers know how to maneuver through these nuances and position your case for the best possible outcome. The difference is that your employer will attempt to interfere with your rights in certain ways. Instead of firing you, your company may attempt to discourage you from taking leave altogether.
If you sue your employer for interfering with your rights, employers will have their own very qualified lawyers helping them vigorously defend the claim. You should have the same. These violations usually occur before your termination. And sometimes your termination will quickly follow.
Here are some ways in which employers typically interfere with your rights:. An employment lawyer can help you avoid interference with your rights altogether. Pennsylvania companies must comply with the Family and Medical Leave Act if they have at least 50 employees for at least 20 weeks in the present or previous year. Employees may take leave if they worked at least 1, hours in 12 month period of time. This is the same as federal law. The FMLA is a federal law. Congress passed the law on a national level.
This means that it applies to every state. The FMLA is the floor, not the ceiling. States cannot pass laws giving you fewer rights than you would receive under federal law.
But states are free to pass laws giving you more rights. Some states have passed laws expanding the FMLA in their respective state. If you live in Pennsylvania, federal law, the FMLA, provides all of your rights for family and medical leave.
The U. FAQ Contact Us. Breadcrumb Home Work Hours. If the opinions of the two designated health care providers differ, your employer may require you to obtain certification from a third health care provider, again at the employer's expense.
This third opinion shall be final and binding. The third health care provider must be approved jointly by you and your employer. If it is requested by your employer and you don't provide the medical certification, your absence is not protected by the FMLA. This means that your employer has the legal right to fire you for that absence unless some other law, or your collective bargaining agreement, applies.
Yes, under some circumstances. Your employer may ask you questions to confirm whether your leave still qualifies for FMLA purposes, and may require periodic reports on your status and intent to return to work after leave.
Also, if your employer wishes to obtain another opinion, you may be required to obtain additional medical certification at the employer's expense, or re-certification while you are still on leave. The employer may have its health care provider contact your health care provider, without your advanced approval, to clarify information in the medical certification or to confirm that it was provided by your health care provider.
The inquiry may not seek additional information regarding your health condition or that of a family member. Subject to certain limitations, your employer may deny the continuation of FMLA leave due to a serious health condition if you fail to fulfill any obligation to provide supporting medical certification.
The employer may not, however, require you to return to work early by offering you a light duty assignment. Your employer cannot interfere with your right to take leave or discriminate against you for requesting information about your rights or for taking a leave. Therefore, if you are in full compliance with your certification requirements, and the purpose of a call from your employer is to harass you or discourage you from taking further leave, your employer may be violating the law.
If you have been denied leave or are not allowed to return to your job at the end of your approved leave, you may want to file a grievance. If you are a union member, you may be able to file a formal grievance through the union. Try to get a shop steward or other union official to help you work through the grievance process.
Even if you are not a member of a union, some employers have policies for handling a dispute regarding leaves. You may be able to resolve the dispute at your job internally. Find out what the policies are, by looking in your employee manual or other sources of personnel policies. Your company's human resources department may be able to help.
However, even if you file a grievance with your employer, the deadlines to file in court or with an administrative agency still apply, so be sure not to miss them.
For more information about these deadlines, please see question 31 below. The U. Most Federal and certain congressional employees are also covered by the law and are subject to the jurisdiction of the U. Office of Personnel Management or Congress. If you believe your rights under the FMLA have been violated, you can file a grievance if you are represented by a union ; you can also file a complaint either with a federal administrative agency the Department of Labor, or DOL or in court.
You may wish to consult with an attorney before making the decision about where to file and how to draft your complaint. Unlike some other employment laws, under the FMLA you are not required to first file with an administrative agency before filing in court. If your case is successfully resolved by an administrative agency, however, it may not be necessary to hire an attorney or file a lawsuit as you will probably be required to waive your legal claims. Therefore, you may wish to first file with the DOL, and then if you are unable to resolve your complaint through the DOL, you can determine at that time as long as two years have not passed whether to file a complaint in court.
Generally, a complaint must be filed either with DOL or in court within two years of the date of the last action which you believe was a violation of the FMLA. However, if it can be shown that the action taken by the employer was willful intentional , the complaint may be filed within three years of that date. For the best chance of success in resolving the complaint, the complaint should be filed as soon after the date of the last action thought to be a violation of the FMLA as is possible.
Union employees who believe that the denial of leave violates their union contract should file a grievance regarding the matter according to the timeframe outlined in their collective bargaining agreement.
The address and telephone number for local offices may usually be found in the telephone directory listings for government offices under U. Government - Labor. The complaint may be filed by you or any other person on your behalf. The complaint may be filed in person, by letter or by telephone.
The complaint must be in writing. The DOL will review the merits of the complaint, and where appropriate, will undertake to resolve the complaint administratively through negotiations with the employer.
When the complaint is resolved administratively, actions are limited to a two-year period, and interest and liquidated damages are not recovered. If the DOL files a lawsuit, you may no longer bring your own lawsuit in court. If an employer is found to have violated FMLA, remedies available to the employee may include:. In addition to the relief described above, you may also recover from the employer:.
The Workplace Fairness Attorney Directory features lawyers from across the United States who primarily represent workers in employment cases. Please note that Workplace Fairness does not operate a lawyer referral service and does not provide legal advice, and that Workplace Fairness is not responsible for any advice that you receive from anyone, attorney or non-attorney, you may contact from this site.
Find an Employment Attorney. Workplace Fairness is a non-profit organization working to preserve and promote employee rights. This site provides comprehensive information about job rights and employment issues nationally and in all 50 states. More about Workplace Fairness. Am I protected under the law? What is a "serious health condition? How is FMLA leave different from pregnancy leave?
Who enforces the law? What are the remedies available to me? More information about the FMLA 1. Under federal law and some state laws, certain employees have the right to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave per year any month period for the following reasons: you have a serious health condition that keeps you from doing your job; you need to care for a sick child, spouse, or parent with a serious health condition; you need to care for a newborn child, newly adopted child, or foster child.
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