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Conn. is first to mandate sick leave for service staff

08/15/2011
In what could be the start of a national trend, Connecticut lawmakers OK’d a new law that requires employers with 50 or more workers in Connecticut to provide up to 40 hours of paid sick leave to their “service workers.”

Requesting light duty isn’t an official FMLA request

07/26/2011
The FMLA grants time off for em­­ployees with serious health conditions, but they must let employers know they need leave. Simply requesting light-duty work isn’t enough.

EEOC finds fault with ‘no-fault’ attendance policies

07/26/2011
Telecommunications giant Verizon has agreed to settle a nationwide class-action lawsuit brought by its disabled employees. In all, the company will pay out about $20 million to employees who missed work for reasons related to their disabilities. The lawsuit, filed by the EEOC on behalf of disabled Verizon workers across the country, claims Verizon’s “no-fault” attendance policy violates the ADA.

Out of FMLA leave–and out of luck?

07/13/2011
Q. One of our employees has a recurring illness that flares up every so often. By taking a few weeks off here and there, he has used all of his paid time off (PTO) and exhausted his FMLA leave. If he has another flare-up, do we have to permit him to take time off even though it would be more than the FMLA requires or our policies allow?

Base FMLA eligibility on date leave begins

07/13/2011

Employees have to give 30 days’ notice before taking FMLA leave. That means some employees may ask for FMLA leave before they are actually eligible. For example, an employee may request time off for a serious health condition when he still has a few hours more to work before hitting the one-year or 1,250-hour milestone. Employers can’t deny the request merely because it was made before the employee became eligible.

State by State 2015 Short-Term Child-Care Leave Laws

07/13/2011
In honor of the impending beginning of another school year, and first-day school jitters everywhere, this chart summarizes states’ short-term leave laws. States that don’t have laws aren’t listed. In most cases, employees may substitute paid accrued leave for unpaid leave. To get the full story on state leave laws, contact your state labor department.

448 million unused vacation days in 2010

07/01/2011
On average, U.S. workers took only 14 of the 18 vacation days they earned last year, a total of 448 million unused days. French workers, on the other hand, took 35 of the 37 vacation days they were due.

The EEOC, maximum leave policies and the new ADA amendments

06/30/2011
The EEOC is getting serious about helping disabled Americans. In early June, the agency held a public meeting on the use of leave as a reasonable accommodation. That move came just two weeks after the agency put its new ADA Amendments Act (ADAAA) regulations into effect.

Switching from traditional leave to PTO? 7 questions to ask

06/29/2011
As you manage the scheduling head­­aches that come with summer vacations, it may be time to entirely reconsider how you handle employee leave. One option: Switch from a traditional time-off program to a paid time off (PTO) bank. Before you make the switch, you’ll ask some basic questions:

HubSpot ditches vacation policy, tells staff: ‘Take what you need’

06/28/2011

Marketing software company HubSpot ditched its vacation policy a year ago, along with paid-time-off forms and vaca­tion rollover. Now, if employees want to take time off, they just take it. CEO Brian Halligan calls the standard corporate vacation policy “a relic of an era when people worked 9 to 5 in an office.”