CLIENT ALERT – Department of Labor Issues Revised FMLA Regulations

The United States Department of Labor has issued revised regulations to the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) that go into effect March 8, 2013. The revised regulations implement recent statutory amendments to the military leave provisions of the FMLA, update the FMLA notice employers must post, and contain other minor changes. The revised regulations also contain a number of provisions specific to airline flight crew members, which are not relevant to most employers.

Most importantly, employers must begin posting the revised FMLA notice beginning March 8th. The revised poster is available at http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/posters/fmlaen.pdf. The regulations continue to require that employers’ FMLA policies include all of the information contained in the FMLA poster. As such, employers must also revise their FMLA policies to reflect the revisions to the poster, including the substantive changes to the section on military leave entitlement.

If you would like more information on the changes to the regulations, a side-by-side comparison of the former and new regulations is available on the Department of Labor’s website (http://www.dol.gov/whd/fmla/2013rule/comparison.htm).