Administrative Leave and FMLA Eligibility
Jerri
3 Posts
We have an employee who only accumulated 1,036 hours of worked time and paid time off in 2002. For two months of 2002, she was on paid administrative leave. She returned to work in December, 2002 and worked until February 5th. Now she is requesting FMLA leave. Our personnel policy has allowed a more generous approach for eligibility requiring employees to have 1,250 EARNED hours (rather than WORKED hours) for the 12 months prior to FMLA request. My question is this: since she did not actually work or use earned annual or sick leave for the 2 months she received paid admin leave, are we required to count that time toward the 1,250 earned hours? Doing so would give her enough time to qualify for FMLA.
Any suggestions on how to word a paid or unpaid administrative leave policy in our handbook? Can we disallow accrual of annual and sick leave and other benefits while an employee is on admin leave? Any help will be greatly appreciated!
Any suggestions on how to word a paid or unpaid administrative leave policy in our handbook? Can we disallow accrual of annual and sick leave and other benefits while an employee is on admin leave? Any help will be greatly appreciated!
Comments
FMLA does talk about 1,250 hours of owkr within the 12 months prior to taking FMLA leave. I'm sure the emplyee has worked that much if the only thing you note in the way of absence is the 60 day administrative leave. Count all work hours back to February 6 or whatever.
If you change your policy to make it hours worked for this emplyee then you need to change it for all emplyees.
In fact, one could argue you're not giving them FMLA since you are counting time that isn't part of th eligibility toward FMLA. While you can give more beneficial leave, if the employee isn't eligible for FMLA leave under the law, then you cna't count it as FMLA leave when the employee does become eligible.