Compliance Stuff

Your employee, Thelma, has requested FMLA leave to take her mom, Louise, to regular doctor appointments. Though the appointment itself will take one hour, Thelma wants to schedule it in the middle of the workday and for a total of five hours. The travel, she says, takes “quite a bit of time . . . and it’s none of your business.” Beginning 2026 a little salty, we see? Naturally, you’re frustrated, since you sense that Thelma purposefully encouraged that appointment for midday, and in any event, there’s no way this doc is two hours each way! The medical appointment itself clearly is covered by FMLA. But is  travel time  associated with the medical appointment covered as well? In an  opinion letter issued this week , the Department of Labor answered the question: . . . when an eligible employee travels to or from a health care provider for a medical appointment regarding the employee’s [or family member’s] serious health condition, he or she may take FMLA leave not only for ...

  Every once in awhile, the U.S. Department of Labor rattles its saber, warning employers that it’s readying itself for aggressive enforcement investigations reviewing alleged FMLA violations. For instance, two years ago, the DOL  announced  that it would ramp up FMLA audits (as well as wage and hour audits generally) those employers in the warehouse and logistics industries. Well, they’re back again. Based on information provided informally during DOL investigations in which we have been involved, we have learned that the DOL is directing investigators to insist on production of additional information from employers particularly with respect to payroll practices. This is potentially a big deal. If you’ve been involved in a DOL investigation over the past year, you’ve noticed a new format for the long-itemized list of information DOL seeks in an FMLA investigation. Take, for example, this laundry list of requests I received from DOL earlier this year in an F-M-L-A investi...

Meet Ray. Ray is to the FMLA as Patrick Mahomes is to football. Ray is an FMLA pro, having taken FMLA leave a total of 158 times over three years. No joke. F-M-L-A simply rolled off Ray’s tongue, enabling him to take leave on countless occasions. As the story goes, Ray started his latest FMLA journey with a three-week leave of absence for pneumonia. Ray worked as a mechanic, regularly operating and repairing the loin-puller machine for his employer, Swift Pork Company. Ray must have loved that loin-puller machine, since he got really salty upon his return to work when his boss told him he would be assigning Ray to a different machine at the plant. Accusing his employer of “punishing” him for being absent three weeks for his illness, Ray announced that he would “take a vacation until [the employer] figured it out.” [Whatever that means . . . ] His vacation request was summarily denied, since it was not requested in advance as required by policy. Ray then used the old stand-by: FMLA leav...