The Family and Health Leave Act, Essay Example

The Family and Health Leave Act is a piece of legislation, aimed to “Promote and achieve compliance with labor standards to protect and enhance the welfare of the nation’s workforce”[1]. The main idea of this act is to make sure that employees have an opportunity to use the temporarily family and health leave under certain circumstances. This law finally officially recognizes the need to combine the family needs and career. Family and Health Leave Act provides certain categories of people with a set of benefits. The basic right which is provided by this piece of legislation includes a 12 – week long unpaid job-secured leave on the following occasions:

1. Caring for the birth of a child or adopting / taking foster responsibilities of a child
2. In case of the serious personal problem with health
3. Caring for a parent, spouse or a child with serious health problems

This way, people may take a more active role in bringing up their children, which is definitely extremely important, as the business world is becoming tougher with time. An employee has to qualify under several criteria to remain protected by the law. He/she is supposed to be working at the current workplace for at least 12 month and should have worked for now less than 1250 hours. The person also has to present documented proof of the validity of his leave. At the same time, not all of the companies are supposed to provide their employees with the privileges mentioned. It is considered that the small businesses may not be able to cope with additional expenses related to rehiring the employees that have been absent for a long period of time. Therefore, the companies that employ less than 50 people in the range of 75 miles are not obliged to provide their workers with the family or health leave[2].

There are a several basic reasons that have lead to inaction of this act:

• A number of single-parent households has increased dramatically, and caring for a child under these conditions is definitely highly complicated.
• Serious flaws in the previous legislation concerning the matter were present, and the issue remained mostly unregulated.
• Women are usually expected to take care of the children, which is frequently a source for discrimination based on the gender principle.

The purposes of the Family and Health Leave act are:

• To balance the demands of the workplace with the needs of families, to promote the stability and economic security of families, and to promote national interests in preserving family integrity
• To promote the goal of equal employment opportunity for women and men, pursuant to such clause

The urgency of this piece of legislation can be defined by the following numbers: approximately 85 million of the US workforce qualifies for the unpaid work leave, approximately 18% of the eligible and covered care givers use this opportunity, up to 90% of the people taking leave based on the health state found recovery to be much faster[3].

United States have perhaps the broadest coverage of people under this act, compared to the other developed industrial states, but the quality of the maternity leave is certainly much lower[4]. A mother can only expect a 12-week unpaid leave based on the Act. At the same time, in Sweden and Norway maternity leave is up to 18 months long and is paid. Similar situations are observed in Estonia and Latvia, as well as in many other European countries.

Works Cited

“Wage and Hour Division” – United States Department of Labor Accessed April 29, 2009 at: http://www.dol.gov/esa/whd/regs/statutes/fmla.htm#SEC_101_DEFINITIONS

“Questions and Answers about the Family and Health Leave Act” – Sloan work and family research network. Accessed April 29, 2009 at: http://wfnetwork.bc.edu/pdfs/FMLA.pdf

“U.S. stands apart from other nations on maternity leave” – USA Today. Published 7/26/2005. Accessed April 29, 2009 at: http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2005-07-26-maternity-leave_x.htm

[1] “Wage and Hour Division” – United States Department of Labor website.

[2] “Wage and Hour Division” – United States Department of Labor website.

[3] “Questions and Answers about the Family and Health Leave Act” – Sloan work and family research network

[4] “U.S. stands apart from other nations on maternity leave” – USA Today