brownIEman
Well-Known Member
Thanks to all of you for your great advice. I am now in the process of getting the paperwork I need. And a double thanks to those of you chiming in on how ignorant OP's remarks were.
littlelady,
I apologize in advance for the long post, but I hope you will find some value in it. I am going to give you some thoughts on FMLA from my experience as a member of management in operations.
First, as you have been told and are moving forward with, FMLA allows you to take either a chunk of days off or intermittent unplanned days. I would like to add two points to what has been said. First, pay close attention to what your doctor fills in on the paperwork. The company will both honor that, and hold you to it. For instance, if your doctor says you may need 2-3 days per month for your condition, expect to receive a write up if you attempt to use a 4th day in one month. Make sure that when you follow the normal call in procedures to use one of your days, that you explicitly tell your management team you are using FMLA, otherwise they may code you a normal sick day and again give you a write up for an attendance occurrence. Also pay attention to the maximum amount of time FMLA allows you to take. I believe for a part time employee it is 6 weeks total over a 12 month period. If you use 6 weeks worth of days in that time period, expect discipline on the next day you try to use one. FMLA is a federal law, and the company has no choice but to follow it, but has no obligation to extend one second beyond what it allows. Do not expect them to.
I hope you understand I am not trying to be insensitive. In a perfect world, there would be more compassion and understanding on our (meaning managements) side, and we could work together to come to a solution that works for both of us. In a perfect world, if you were approved for say 1 day a week by your doctor, but one week you needed a second day you could come to me as a member of your management team and I could say well, that is reasonable, it is not hugely out of the scope of the FMLA terms, sure, take that day, take that inch beyond what the law allows. The problem is, we as management have done that, given the inch, and the result has been that we have to manage a ton of employees taking a mile. We have operations where 60 percent of the employees have some form of intermittent FMLA approved by a doctor. If you look at the usage records, you often find that 90 percent of those days are Fridays or Mondays. You have the guys using an FMLA day that was approved by his doctor for migraines on a friday, then openly bragging to his friends on Monday about his 3 day weekend in Vegas. Basically taunting his management team with the fact they can do nothing about his blatant abuse of a federal law.
I do not tell you this in any way to accuse you of abusing this great federal law. Which, by the way, I have used myself after the birth of my daughter. I tell you this because I want you to understand that there are many people abusing this law, and it makes the job of management even more difficult. The result, wrongly or not, is that you have very frustrated management people. It would be nice if we could positively identify the people who are abusing the system from the people with legitimate situations and treat them differently, give no slack to the first group and more to the second. The problem is there is no way for us to positively tell, and it is not legal to try and punish the usage of the system by suspected abusers. So the only reasonable option we have is to follow the letter of the law, and hold all employees to it as well.
So, make sure you know exactly how much time you are entitled to. If you go over that allotment, expect to receive discipline. I know at that point it will feel like your management team is being unreasonable and uncaring and you may feel offended that they think you are abusing the system. They have no way of knowing if you are or not, and really should not be trying to make that determination.
One further point that has not been mentioned. The company has the right to pay out your bank of discretionary, vacation, and sick days for each FMLA day you use. You have the right to save one week of vacation, but you must request that up front, if you do not request to save your one week, the default is generally to pay it out.
For those who have been bashing optimus, I understand his comments seemed insensitive, and I do not blame you for your reaction. I hope you can understand his frustration though, and for justice sake hope that you have just as much ire for the people who abuse FMLA and create the environment where there really cannot be any flexibility and everyone using it either becomes or feels suspect.