Family Medical Leave Act: Top 5 Violations

Описание: The Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) is the law that lets employees stay home to care for themselves, or a close family member, when illness hits. This important law is complex and frequently violated. This video explains the top 5 FMLA violations. This video will help you understand your rights under the FMLA.

Transcript:

Have you or a close family member ever been so sick that you can't go to work because you need to stay home and care for yourself or that family member? Well, in those situations, you can stay home because you have the right to do that under a law called the Family Medical Leave Act. It's a really important law. In this video, I'm gonna explain the top five ways that companies violate this important law and make it tough for American workers.

Hi, I'm Robert Oettinger. I'm an employment lawyer and I focus on representing employees and executives. I've been doing this since 1999. A lot of Americans are covered by the Family Medical Leave Act and it gives you the legal right to stay home and take care of yourself or a sick family member when you're ill. But this law is fairly complex and it's violated frequently. As a result, a lot of workers don't get to enjoy the benefits of the FMLA. In this video, I'm going to point out the five most common violations of the FMLA.

is the denial of FMLA leave to an eligible employee. This happens when an eligible employee asks their employer for time off to take care of themselves or a sick family member and the company just says no. Violation number two is firing an employee while they're out on FMLA leave. This happens all the time and it's illegal. The third violation that we see a lot is when an employee gets fired just for asking to take FMLA leave. The fourth violation is reinstating an employee who goes

out on leave into a lower position. Under the FMI leave, you're entitled to return to your job the same or similar position, but sometimes companies kind of punish employees by giving them worse jobs when they return from leave.

Robert Ottinger (01:44.237)
The fifth most common FMLA violation that we see is that companies ask employees who are out on leave to do work when they're out on leave. So you may be asking yourself right now, so there's all these violations, what can you do about it? Well, luckily under the FMLA, there's a lot you can do. In fact, if a company violates the FMLA leave, they automatically have to pay twice the amount of damages the person sustains and all their legal fees. Also, one of the most common violations is people getting fired in connection with taking leave, either asking for it or just

is taking leave. And when this happens, the law has a presumption of guilt against a company that fires anyone within 90 days of either asking for leave or taking it. If your rights under the FNLA are violated, you have the ability to enforce them. A good employment law firm can help you do that. FNLA cases are some of the easiest ones out there to win. The best FNLA cases when you have an employee who's been with a company for a long time doing a pretty good job, but then when they take leave or ask about it, they suddenly get fired. In a situation like that, the company has virtually no defense because

the employee was doing fine until they asked to take leave and suddenly they're fired. That looks terrible for the company. So if something like that happens to you, find a good employment law firm like ours and give them a call and you might find out that you can get pretty quick results. I'm Robert Oettinger. Thanks for watching.