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Featured Guest Blogger November 3rd, 2009

Marcy Karin is an Associate Clinical Professor of Law and Director of a new Work-Life Policy Unit of the Civil Justice Clinic at the ASU Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. Her research interests include workplace law, policy, and practice, civil justice and litigation, and women’s legal history. She is also an active member of the national work-life law and policy community. Please note that the views of our guest bloggers do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sloan Work and Family Research Network.

Military families have acute needs for workplace flexibility. Dealing with multiple deployments, war-related disabilities and injuries, frequent moves, geographic isolation from services at bases, transitions back to civilian life, and other service-related needs impact servicemembers and their families in a real way. Military families also struggle with many work-life stresses that all families face. As The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation correctly notes, “policies that ease the strains on service members’ families” must be enacted.

Last week, President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010 (NDAA 2010) into law. The NDAA 2010 includes the Supporting Military Families Act of 2009, which expands the qualifying exigency and military caregiver provisions of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). President Bush enacted these provisions last year in the first successful attempt to amend the FMLA.

Under the 2008 FMLA expansion, eligible employees are allowed to take up to 12 weeks of job-protected time off for any qualifying exigency arising out of the fact that the spouse, son, daughter, or parent of an employee is on active duty (or has been notified of an impending call to active duty) in the National Guard or Reserves in support of a contingency operation. Department of Labor regulations define a qualifying exigency to include short-notice deployment, military events and related activities, childcare and school activities, financial and legal arrangements, counseling, rest and recuperation, post-deployment activities, and any other service-related activity that the employer and employee agree is a qualifying exigency.

The 2008 law also created military caregiver leave, which allows an eligible employee (spouse, son, daughter, parent, or next of kin of a covered servicemember) to take up to 26 weeks of job-protected time off to care for a wounded servicemember.

The NDAA 2010 expands the scope of who may take time off under the 2008 provisions. Specifically, the new law allows:

• family members of active duty members of the regular Armed Forces to use qualifying exigency leave when the servicemember is deployed to a foreign country. (The 2008 law only applied to family members of the National Guard and Reserves who were called to active duty in support of a contingency operation.);

• federal employees to use qualifying exigency leave. (Only certain federal employees were allowed to use it under the 2008 law.);

• military caregiver leave to be taken for veterans who served within 5 years of the date of medical treatment, recuperation, or therapy. (The 2008 law only applied to servicemembers who were currently in the military.); and

• military caregiver leave for existing or preexisting injuries that are aggravated in the line of duty during active duty service. (The current regulations deny coverage for these injuries.).

The expansions took effect when the President signed the law. Proposed regulations from the Department of Labor and the Office of Personnel Management, which will be drafted in consultation with the Secretaries of Defense and Veterans Affairs, should be issued shortly.

At the bill signing ceremony, President Obama noted that this law “reaffirms our commitment to our brave men and women in uniform and our wounded warriors.” This is just the first of many laws that President Obama will likely sign that reaffirm this commitment and provide military families with access to additional time off and other types of workplace flexibility. We can also expect the President to fulfill his campaign promise to support the needs of all workers as they struggle to find a work-life balance. Stay tuned for more action from the Obama Administration in the months and years to come. In the meantime, employers should revise their FMLA policies to reflect the NDAA 2010, as well as notify employees of these changes.

For more stories about the flexibility needs of military families, listen to the remarks of Dr. Shelley MacDermid Wadsworth, Kelly Hruska, Sheila Casey, and Patricia Kempthorne at this 2008 Workplace Flexibility 2010 briefing.

• Military , Policy , Uncategorized