On August 5, 1993 the amended Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA), was intended to help employees have a work life balance. This accomplishment placed the United Stated ahead of major barriers for the fair labor laws. Before having the amended FMLA put into place, employees were rarely granted job protection for caring for newborns, relatives and personal medical illness. With the new amended act, it allowed employees to take a leave of absence from their job and allowed protection from being fired or having to take a reduced work scheduled by force from the company. Initially, the bill had been introduced to Congress session for the past nine years and had been vetoed twice by President George H.W. Bush, although, in the 1988 Presidential campaign, he had supported the thought of parental leave for employees. He had stated, "he did not think the Federal Government should order companies to provide a certain benefit" (Holmes, 1990). It is hard to imagine that as recently before the 1993 amended act not even pregnant women could take a few days off to give birth to their own child without risking their job. FMLA set a key baseline for U.S. labor practices by affirming that every so often your family must come first even if it is at the cost of losing your job.
This paper will give an in-depth look at how the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 affected employees and employers and eventually changed how the United States values time with their family over work.
II. Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993
The FMLA provides eligible employees with two types of job-protected leave: regular leave and military family leave. In turn, military family leave consists of qualifying exigency leave and military caregiver ...
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...took FMLA-covered leave to care for themselves or a loved one. Twenty years later, FMLA leave has been used nearly 100 million times, and research shows that the FMLA has not imposed an undue burden on employers" (Fortman, 2013).
IV. Conclusion
FMLA is and will always be a landmark legislation that allowed Americans to realize that family is valuable and worth fighting for. FMLA allowed employees to understand they are able to have a balance work life with family life, which untimely create employees morale and a positive atmosphere for employers. It has also been displayed that positive workers creates positive production for employers. Overall, positive effects on employees and employers are quite overwhelming and there have been changes since the act was put into place but it is only to strength what the 1993 started- family values and protection of employees.
In her essay, “Win-Win Flexibility,” Karen Kornbluh explains the need for workplace changes due to changing family structures. Kornbluh explains that norms have shifted from a traditional family consisting of a breadwinner and a homemaker to what she coins a juggler family. According to Kornbluh, a juggler family is characterized by, “two working parents or an unmarried working parent” (323). By making changes, traditional work schedules can be altered to increase flexibility and better accommodate juggler families. In addition to the shift in family structures, parents are now working longer hours and have limited opportunities to take time off or change their work schedule. As a result of long, inflexible hours, many working individuals find it difficult to care for children or provide care for elderly or ill family members. Due to this, large sums of money are spent on childcare each year, and many children still do not receive the level of care that they need (Kornbluh 323).
FMLA/DPL leave is available on a consecutive, reduced schedule or intermittent basis for up to twelve workweeks only for specific trigger events:
In response to the increasing need for employees to balance the demands of the workplace with the needs of families, Congress passed the Family and Medical Leave Act. Without a policy like FMLA in place, many employees often would have had to choose between “the job they need and the family they love” (Hayes). The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 is the first national law created to help Americans balance the demands of the workplace with the needs of the family. It successfully helps bridge the gap between family and work and secures the right for both men and women to get unpaid leave and assistance when dealing with family related circumstances.
This essay will first address the statute used and interpretation of the threshold test by the courts, and then focus on cases involving vulnerable children to assess whether the statute in The Children Act 1989 is sufficient in protecting these children from harm. I will look at the argument in favour of the current approach taken by the courts, and the counter-argument in favour of changing the current approach. The arguments are delicately balanced and the law is always developing, so it will be interesting to see how the Supreme Court resolves this issue in future.
Overall the Family and Medical Leave Act has raised many issues on whether leave should be encourage and/or paid for by the employers. As of today, no haven policy has been enacted to tackle the challenges surrounding this issue, but positive steps have been taken and one day there will be no question that hard working employees will get the rights they
The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA) provides certain employees with up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave and job protection for childbirth, adoption or foster care; to care for a seriously ill child, spouse, or parent; or for an employee’s own serious illness (Cañas & Sondak, 2011). It also requires that their group health benefits remain intact during the unpaid leave of absence. The employee must have worked for the employer for at least a year and must have earned 1,250 hours of service during the previous 12 months ((Cañas & Sondak, 2011, pg. 70).
The present structure of the average family in America is changing, mainly due to the growing number of mothers who now work outside the home. The current mark of dual-earner families stands at 64 percent, making it a solid majority today. This alteration of the "traditional" structure of the family is a channel for other changes that may soon occur.
The balancing act of family and work can be very difficult at times. At some point in everyone’s life, he or she will need to take time off of work to deal with family matters. The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) of 1993 was created to help employees find a balance between the challenging demands of work and home. This Act allows eligible workers that require time off for personal reasons or family emergencies up to twelve weeks of unpaid leave.
One of the biggest changes in American families has been divorce and the single-parent families. In the article “What is a Family?”, Pauline Irit Erera argues that after World War 11, is when the major changes in families begun. Women were already accustomed to having jobs and working while their men were away during the war, and when the men all came back is when things started to change. Erera says, “The movement for gender equality led to increased employment opportunities for women, while at the same time declining wage rates for unskilled male workers made them less desirable marriage partners.” (Ere...
The Changing Dynamics of Work and Family as it relates to the topic of family dynamics, careers and their impact on the individual and family throughout the lifespan was written by Marlynn Levin, Director of The Work and Human Center, and The Merrill-Palmer Institute for Family and Human Development. The author states that in the past two decades, Americans have experience some major changes in their family dynamics and structure. The author maintains that during the lifespan many families and individuals have struggled with balancing their homes, careers, and family life. However, today employers and educational institutes are coming up with strategies to assist families and individuals with balancing their family life, education, and careers. The author also maintains that the dramatic changes of todays social, economic, and political structure of the American families has put many families and individuals in a crisis. Therefore, the author believes that the changes in our family dynamic have affected families and individuals more today than ever. For example, in the earlier days wives could stay home and raise their children, and the husbands were the sole provider for his family. However the mother did choose to work in the earlier days, there would always be someone there to baby sit the children, but the changes and down turn of todays economic has forced almost every family member to get a job. However, the author maintains that today’s social changes have provided ...
The Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) was eight long years in the making. After many bitter debates between the Republicans and Democrats, Congress passed the Act on February 4, 1993. President Clinton signed the measure into law the following day. The Act became effective on August 5, 1993. The Act required employers with fifty or more employees within a seventy-five mile radius to offer eligible employees up to twelve weeks of unpaid leave during a twelve month period for a variety of medical reasons. Some of the general medical reasons are, for the birth or adoption, to care for a seriously ill parent, spouse or child or to undergo medical treatment for their own illness. The Act spelled out provisions on employer coverage; employee eligibility for the law's benefits; entitlement to leave, maintenance of health benefits during leave, and job restoration after leave; notice and certification of the need for FMLA leave; and protection for employees who request or take FMLA leave. (1) The law also requires employers to keep certain records. It was estimated that the Act would affect five percent of America's employers and forty percent of all employees. This paper will show the ethical standpoint on how employers handle FMLA. In addition, this paper will show the progress FMLA has made in five years, becoming more ethically correct.
Recently women’s rights and women’s equality in the workplace has come back to the fore as a topic for discussion in government agencies and the United Nations. Whilst this is a very important topic, when it comes to time off from work when a new child is born, women in the US have some provision, whereas men have none.
While the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act theoretically guarantees all workers up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a new child or sick family member, it applies only to businesses with more than 50 employees, only covers workers that have been with their employer for at least one year, and doesn’t extend to part-time workers. These exemptions are significant; they ensure that just over half of American workers and less than a fifth of all new mothers are actually covered by FMLA. And they disproportionately affect low-income workers, who are more likely to work for small businesses, change employers frequently, and piece together multiple part-time
Rousculp, M., Johnston, S., Palmer, L., Chu, B., Mahadevia, P. and Nichol, K., 2010. Attending work while sick: Implication of flexible sick leave policies. Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 52(10), pp.1009--1013.
It is time we stop treating child care as a side issue or a women’s issue, and treat it like the priority that it is. Paternity leave is good for women's careers. “When childcare responsibilities fall exclusively on the mother, the effect is to reduce women’s wages. Time out of the labor force deprives women of experience and promotions. When men shoulder more of the childcare burden, the effect is lessened (“The Benefits of Paternity Leave”).” Paid family leave has become an important way to signal to employees that the company is invested in them. People feel their company is committed to them in the long term. Overall, paid family leave helps keep people in the workforce after they have children. “When more workers are able to take leave, they are more likely to choose to remain in the labor market. Paid parental leave is associated with higher employment in economies around the world (Covert)”.