April 24, 2003
New state law brings more flexibility to care for family members
A new law that went into the books in January gives employees in Washington state more freedom to use accrued leave.
The new Family Care Act gives employees with accrued sick leave, vacation, comp time and a personal holiday the right to use that time to care for a qualifying family member with a qualifying medical condition. Previously, an employer might only grant the use of accrued leave up to 12 weeks, as required by the federal law, the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). And that right only pertained to employees who met FMLA eligibility criteria.
“At the UW, employees have generally had a fair amount of flexibility anyway,” said Bruce Miller, the UW Human Resources analyst who reviewed the legislation on behalf of the institution. “This adds another increment of flexibility. For other employers, perhaps those in the private sector who might have been less accommodating, the Family Care Act could be more significant.”
Still, it does affect the UW too.
Previously, an employee with a balance of paid leave who wanted to use those hours to care for a seriously ill parent, would have no rights beyond the 12 weeks off work guaranteed by FMLA — and that’s only if all of the eligibility requirements were met. Often a department on campus would work with employees to help them meet their needs, Miller says, but there was no legal obligation to approve the use of paid leave beyond 12 weeks. Today that same employee could use all accrued paid leave to earn a paycheck while away from the job to care for a seriously ill parent or other qualifying family member.
The FMLA only applies to employees with 12 months of cumulative service and those who worked for the state for at least 1,250 hours, roughly 60 percent, in the 12 months immediately preceding the date the leave would begin. Today, any employee with accrued leave can use that leave to care for a sick family member because there is no minimum service requirement under the state law.
The two laws also define a family member differently. The state law applies to an employee’s parent or person who acted as the employee’s parent, spouse, child, grandparent or parent-in-law. The federal law applies to a parent or person who acted as the employee’s parent, spouse or child.
Human Resources officials organized training sessions in January and February for all HR consultants so that they would be aware of the law and its sometimes subtle differences with FMLA. As a result, Randi Shapiro, director of the Work/Life office, says there hasn’t been a lot of confusion about the new law.
“We were concerned about that possibility,” Shapiro said. “But our primary focus was to get the HR consultants to understand it. They now have a good understanding and I think are able to handle the questions they’re getting. So there’s been very little confusion.”
More information about the Family Care Act and FMLA is available online at http://www.washington.edu/admin/hr/pol.proc/fmla/index.html.
