Family Medical Leave Act – parts of it (at least the way they’re interpreted by our lawyers) have some pretty weird results.
My company has a perfect attendance reward program. It’s not much – a $50 savings bond for every year of perfect attendance. The record is 13 years. (Can you imagine?
You can miss work for things like bereavement, jury duty, military service and still get the bonds. Totally rational and understandable. Those are serious events that you have no control over.
But you can also miss for illness or temporary disability (major or minor – yourself or your spouse and/or children) as long as you and your absence qualify under FMLA.
The lawyers say we can’t treat you any differently than the guy who came to work every day. Okay, fine.
We say we’re not penalizing anyone for an FMLA absence if they don’t get the bond – they’re just not getting the “extra” reward. Lawyers say it doesn’t work that way – we’d be discriminating if we didn’t give it to them. Hogwash!
I think we oughtta just give everybody in the freaking plant a bond and say to hell with it.
This year, one guy with 11 years perfect attendance doesn’t get bonds ($550 worth)because he was late – once. (There must have been a blizzard or something.)
But the guy who was off work for two months having elective surgery gets the bonds because under FMLA, we’d be discriminating against him if we didn’t give him one.
You almost wanna throw the baby out with the bath water – if somebody can miss up to three months work and have “perfect attendance” – why have the program at all?
Just ticks me off when you really can’t do something special for hard-working people. Mumble mumble Boomhauer mumble mumble.
A lot of social engineering legislation creates unintended (to some, at least) effects. Witness the ADA and the golfer of a year or so ago. It’s a convoluted modern world - please read your program before you occupy a seat in the stadium. Extra points if you are unable to read (inability to read is not necessarily a requirement for these “bonus” points, that are in fact not a bonus, but only your due).
Elelle – it was back surgery – maybe a fusion? I could find out for sure.
Dennis said he’d been putting it off because the condition really wasn’t causing him any problems.
He finally let the doctor schedule him because he (Denny, not the doc) was getting ready to retire.
He said he didn’t want surgery “messing up his retirement plans”, and he wanted to do it while he still had the company’s medical plan rather than Medicare.
He also checked with HR first to make sure that the time off wouldn’t mess up his perfect attendance.
Well, he’s smart enough. And the other guy’s reason for being late? I expect it was with good reason. At any rate, depending on your standing in the company, is it worthwhile to be the one to argue the discrepancy?
I don’t work for a company, so, idealistically it’s always worth it. But, being the Bad Seed can take it’s toll.
I run a very small company, and admittedly don’t bother keeping up with some of the idiotic rulemaking that big concerns have to deal with, but is the discretion of management illegal?
If the formal incentive program says an otherwise deserving fella loses his bonus on a technicality, surely there must be a hundred ways for a creative and appreciative management to make it up to him without violating any contracts or ‘regulations.’
(If only in the form of a wink and a nod towards a year of two-hour lunch breaks.)
Dr. Watson
“Denial? Oh no, not me. I gave that up.”