Editor’s note: The Back to Basics column serves as an accessible way to understand employment law. If you’re new to HR (or just need a little refresher), follow along as the HR Dive team speaks with legal experts, peruses federal guidance and lays out the basics of employment law. Feel free to send tips, questions and feedback to [email protected].
A leave specialist for a sanitation services company receives an email from a manager at one of the company’s satellite locations. The manager writes that a worker has informed him that she is pregnant and will soon need to take time away from work.
Naturally, the specialist begins to prepare Family and Medical Leave Act paperwork for the manager and worker to complete, as an absence due to childbirth would fall under the FMLA’s qualifying reasons for leave. The employee is otherwise qualified, having worked her current job for three years and logging more than the required 1,250 work hours of service in the past year.
It’s as cut-and-dry as an FMLA request could be, the specialist thinks. Though eagle-eyed HR veterans may spot a small wrinkle: Does the employee work at a location where the company has at least 50 employees within 75 miles of the location?
Our hypothetical employer grants the employee FMLA leave regardless, effectively ignoring the law’s so-called 50/75 rule. Indeed, many employers have historically waived this requirement, Alexis Knapp, shareholder at Littler Mendelson, said in an interview...
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