Under both the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and the California Family Rights Act (CFRA), an employee is needed to provide at least one month’ notification of the requirement for leave when the requirement for leave is foreseeable. When the requirement for leave is not foreseeable, no quantity of advance notification is needed.
The employee should request leave, orally or in writing, and show that the leave is for a covered factor, however there is no requirement that the employee refer particularly to the FMLA or the CFRA. For an qualified employee to state just “I require a long time off for drug rehab” or “I am going to be out for back surgery” suffices notification of the employee’s requirement for leave.
On the other hand, the employee should show that a medical leave is essential for a major health condition. An employee specifying just that he is going to take an ill day, or that she will miss out on work for some medical professionals’ consultations, is not enough. If the employee is not able to provide notification due to the fact that he or she is hospitalized or otherwise disabled, a relative, a good friend or the employee’s doctor might interact the employee’s requirement for leave.
You might request the employee to total a composed application for FMLA/CFRA leave, however if the employee stops working to do so or is not able to do so on account of illness or injury, you are not relieved of your commitment to designate the leave as FMLA/CFRA leave if you have enough information to warrant such a classification.
You might need an employee to send a medical accreditation of the requirement for leave within 15 days of the employee’s request for leave. This accreditation should be finished and signed by the employee’shealth care provider You must not use the U.S. Department of Labor medical accreditation kind, Kind WH-380, due to the fact that it asks the health care provider to list medical truths validating the employee’s requirement for leave, and medical truths might not be revealed under California law without the employee’s composed permission.
Rather, use the kind appearing at Title 2, Area 11097 of the California Code of Laws. If you question the credibility of the medical accreditation or of the employee’s requirement for leave, you might need the employee to get a 2nd and even a 3rd viewpoint at the business’s cost. You might not, nevertheless, challenge the credibility of the accreditation of a family member’s health care provider sent in assistance of an employee’s request for leave to care for a family member.
If the employee stops working to send the needed medical accreditation, you might reject classification of the leave as FMLA/CFRA-protected leave and end the employee for being missing without leave. As an useful matter, however, it is finest to make numerous efforts to get the medical accreditation kind from the employee or his or her doctor, and to record those efforts, prior to rejecting classification of FMLA/CFRA leave, offered the possibility that an employee fired for stopping working to provide medical accreditation will take legal action against for rejection of leave or retaliation.
Needs To an employee take a subsequent FMLA/CFRA leave for the very same factor as a previous leave when medical accreditation was offered and the optimum quantity of offered leave was not taken, the employee does not require to provide a brand-new medical accreditation of the requirement for leave. If an employee takes another FMLA/CFRA leave for a various factor, a brand-new medical accreditation would require to be sent.
This post is excerpted from Chapter 15 of the freshly launched California Work Law: A Guide for Companies, Modified and Upgraded for 2022 by James J. McDonald, Jr.