Family Medical Leave Turns 15, Under Attack by Bush Labor Department

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2008/04/10/family-medical-leave-turns-15-under-attack-by-bush-labor-department/

by Mike Hall, Apr 10, 2008

Fifteen years after the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) became law, workers have used the unpaid leave some 100 million times to take care of a newborn, a sick child or other family member or themselves. But workers may have a harder time taking family leave if changes to the law proposed by the Bush Department of Labor are adopted.

This morning at a House hearing, which marked the 15th anniversary of the landmark law, Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Education and Labor Workforce Protection Subcommittee, said she is

…disappointed the department is proposing changes to make it harder on workers to utilize FMLA…It’s disturbing to me because they shift the balance more in favor to employers. They create more hoops for the workers to jump through.

Debra Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women and Families (NPWF), told the subcommittee that if the proposed changes are enacted,

workers will find that they must give more notice, more information, have more medical examinations and respond to employer requirements in shorter time frames. Employers, on the other hand, would have more time to respond to employees’ request for FMLA leave and more ways to delay or deny FMLA leave.

There have been no improvement to the law in 15 years, except when Congress in January granted families of wounded service personnel FMLA rights.

Former Rep. Patricia Schroeder (D-Colo.), who is considered the “mother of family and medical leave” for her efforts to get the act passed and signed into law, said that when it was enacted, she thought it was a first step and that many improvements would made.

FULL story at link.

[Fox Mulder]

1. This pisses me off.

Bush and his cronies have done everything they could to give more power to employers and less power to the employees. :grr:

[Iris]

2. The party of family values strikes again.

This is just disgusting.

[TacticalPeek]

3. Bastards.

:grr: