Human Resource Blog

Wyoming FMLA

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One of our employees is pregnant and has severe morning sickness.  She has come to work at our Wyoming Company 2 or 3 hours late several times.  She wants to use FMLA for that time, but I told her that FMLA only covers an entire day of leave, not a few hours here and there.  Who is right?

Employees in Wyoming do not have any maternity leave or state-mandated disability leave, aside from the federal FMLA.  There are about 38 other states with the same situation. 

FMLA, or the federal Family and Medical Leave Act, allows employees to take up to 12 weeks of job-protected, unpaid leave each year.  This leave may be used for a variety of family or personal reasons.  A couple of those reasons are the employee’s serious health condition, as well as the birth of a child.

For employers having 50 or more employees within a 75-mile radius of each other, the FMLA rules apply.  The law is applicable to all public agencies.  This includes public, as well as private, secondary and elementary schools.

If the FMLA law covers a company, then there is nothing to prevent any employees from using the leave sporadically or intermittently.  If an employee, for example, were undergoing chemotherapy treatments, he or she might need to miss a few hours of work per day, for a few days per week.  This is perfectly legal under FMLA until the employee has exhausted his or her total of 12 weeks of leave.

If an employee has pregnancy-related vomiting and nausea that are severe enough to prevent her from coming to work, she is entitled to take unpaid leave from work.  This is true even if her time off is only for partial days. 

Each employer has the right to request a doctor’s certification in order to verify that the employee has a medical condition that limits her ability to work on occasion.  After an employee has obtained such certification, she can take off any hours that she needs to, without having to schedule her time off in advance.

When an employee takes time off due to pregnancy complications, including morning sickness, it counts towards that employee’s annual total.  The total amount of leave that an employee may take under FMLA is capped at 12 weeks per year.  JH