Human Resource Blog

Unscheduled FMLA in Georgia

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One of our employees is pregnant and has severe morning sickness. She has come to work at our Georgia company 2 or 3 hours late several times, and wants to use FMLA leave for the time. Doesn’t FMLA have to be scheduled in advance?

FMLA, the federal Family and Medical Leave Act, applies to companies with 50 or more employees at one work site, within a 75 mile radius. If your employee is eligible for this coverage, meaning she has worked at least 1,250 hours for your company over the last 12 months, then you must grant her the FMLA leave.

Since Georgia, like nearly 40 of the states in the U.S. doesn’t have a maternity leave or state disability law in effect, the employee is within her rights to charge her time off to FMLA. The law grants leave to eligible employees for a variety of personal reasons including serious health conditions and/or pregnancy and childbirth.

As an employer, you aren’t alone in questioning this particular use of the law. A recent study by the U.S. Department of Labor states that many employers nationwide are concerned with intermittent leave charged to FMLA, arguing that sporadic use isn’t the original intention of the law.

Nothing exists in the current FMLA, however, to disallow an employee from using FMLA for intermittent leave. Therefore, the employer must grant FMLA leave to eligible employees, and maintain their health insurance coverage for the duration of the leave.

According to the law, leave granted to eligible employees is unpaid and job-protected, for up to 12 weeks. Therefore, the leave your employee uses for morning sickness or other pregnancy related problems would be charged against those 12 weeks.

Suppose an employee takes off 3 hours every day over a 3 week period for pregnancy related conditions. That total of 45 hours would be subtracted from 480, leaving 435 hours for her to take off after childbirth.

As an employer, you have some rights, too. You may request a doctor’s confirmation that the employee has a serious medical condition, which specifically outlines the limits regarding work. Once that statement is on file, the employee can take leave when and as she needs it–no prior notification required, assuming that her condition is sporadic in nature. JH