FML absence while company is shutdown

Milo2009

I attended a conference a couple months ago and it was brought up that if the compnany shutdown for a week or more, any employee on and FML leave those hours may not be counted towards the 480 FML hours. Has anyone else heard of this? If so, can someone point me in the right direction of where to find that information?

TXHRGuy

Generally, you can't count time as FMLA time if the person on leave was not actually supposed to be at work.  There are a couple exceptions and they can be found in 29CFR825.200(h):

    (h) For purposes of determining the amount of leave used by an
employee, the fact that a holiday may occur within the week taken as
FMLA leave has no effect; the week is counted as a week of FMLA leave.
However, if an employee is using FMLA leave in increments of less than
one week, the holiday will not count against the employee's FMLA
entitlement unless the employee was otherwise scheduled and expected to
work during the holiday. Similarly, if for some reason the employer's
business activity has temporarily ceased and employees generally are
not expected to report for work for one or more weeks (e.g., a school
closing two weeks for the Christmas/New Year holiday or the summer
vacation or an employer closing the plant for retooling or repairs),
the days the employer's activities have ceased do not count against the
employee's FMLA leave entitlement. Methods for determining an
employee's 12-week leave entitlement are also described in Sec. 
825.205.