When FMLA Has Impeccable Timing Around a Holiday, This is What Employers Shouldn’t Do.
Every HR pro knows this little workplace miracle. Just as your office or plant is winding down for Memorial Day—or some other prime-time long weekend— boom : your employee’s chronic condition suddenly flares up like a Roman candle. What timing. A total and complete coincidence, right? Enter Andrew, who worked as a conductor for CSX Railroad and a chap whose story I highlighted at my recent FMLA & ADA Master Class [ see recording details below ]. Andrew’s FMLA leave (coincidentally) clustered around holidays, and CSX relied in part on that holiday timing and broader aggregate statistics to support its suspicion that something was amiss. Like so many employers, especially those in the transportation industry, CSX pulls its hair out over the throngs of employees who call out for FMLA around the holidays. So, CSX investigated Andrew and a number of other employees whose FMLA leave clustered around these same holidays to determine if they were playing fast and loose with FMLA time. But ...