While there are plenty of employees who legitimately need and appropriately use Family and Medical Leave Act leave, there are some bad apples out there who abuse FMLA leave, typically to cover a day off here and there – and employers are often frustrated with how to deal with them. While the FMLA itself provides some limited recourse (mostly in terms of certifications and recertifications) for employers to question overall patterns of use, it doesn’t really address specific incidents of intermittent leave use. So what can employers do? Well, one option might be to hire a private investigator.
Continue Reading Employers May Use a Private Investigator to Validate an Employee’s Use of FMLA Leave
Extraordinary Employee Misconduct: Making Snowboarding Movies While on FMLA?
It’s not surprising that employers don’t approve of employees “shredding the gnar”* when they’re supposedly unable to work because of a serious medical condition. And that’s exactly what happened in Botelho v. Mayorkas, where a former Behavior Detection Officer for the TSA who worked at the Honolulu International Airport was fired for Family and Medical Leave Act abuse after his employer discovered that he was making snowboarding movies while apparently using FMLA to take an extended vacation.
Continue Reading Extraordinary Employee Misconduct: Making Snowboarding Movies While on FMLA?
“Taking a Trip Is Not Protected Activity Under the FMLA”
So said a federal court in tossing an employee’s rather cheeky claims of interference with her rights under the Family and Medical Leave Act, as well as retaliation for taking FMLA leave, when she was fired after taking a trip to Thailand – for which she had previously requested time off and was denied – while on FMLA leave.
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FMLA Is Not A “Get Out Of Jail Free” Card!
I know that many employers feel hamstrung by the Family and Medical Leave Act’s statutory protections for employees. They can’t do much about the significant negative effects on business operations because of an employee’s unscheduled intermittent FMLA leave, for example. And FMLA abuse is sometimes (if not often) suspected but hard to prove. Many employees seem to view FMLA as a “get out of jail free” card that insulates them from discipline for bad behavior that is related in any way to FMLA – and a literal example of this can be found in the recent case of Capps v. Mondelez Global LLC.
Continue Reading FMLA Is Not A “Get Out Of Jail Free” Card!