Two Employees on FMLA- Help!

cindyp

I have a situation where two employees are on FMLA leave. One is a 20 year ee in an important position. She has cancer and has exhausted her 12 weeks with chemo and now is into 8 weeks of radiation. We have offered her a LOA until radiation is complete. It would be difficult to replace her and we currently have her backup doing her position and someone else filling in for the backup person. The other employee has been with us 2 years and is in an entry level position. She has a condition which has needed intermittant FMLA which we granted. She is nearing the end of her 12 weeks of FMLA and we do not want to extend a lengthy LOA to her. Am I in hot-water for not being consistent here? The second employee is having difficulty doing the basic elements of her job due to her illness. She really should be pursuing disability options. In her position we need someone there and have no spare people to fill in. Since I offered one person the extended LOA do I have to offer it to every employee no matter what the responsibility level of the position? In the past we have offered LOA options to people unrelated to FMLA. They wanted to go South for the winter and since we are slow in the location they work in we granted that. We don't have a formal LOA written policy. Thanks for your help.

Theresa Gegen TX

The problem with treating employees inconsitantly is that one employee can claim that the reason you treated me differently is because of my race, age, gender, (You name the protected category). If you have a good solid business reason for giving one employee personal leave and not giving it to the other employee, your company's decision will be defensible. However, since you say that the company has given leave in the past, for basically whatever personal reason the person brings up, I would be careful about not giving that employee some additional leave. I think you should get with your employment law counsel BEFORE you make the decision not to give one employeee additional leave.

Good Luck!

Rockie

I agree. Not following policies fairly and consistently can land you in hot water, especially when dealing with protected classes.