The idea of the FMLA is that we make employers (and sometimes coworkers) sacrifice something due to the needs of other employees. To the extent that a given employee doesn’t genuinely have this need then they are violating the spirit of the law, aka “gaming the system”. MMM has information which suggests that such is the case in this situation.
The fact that they’re legally “entitled” to that doesn’t change this.
We have a fantastic sick leave policy where I work. You can use sick leave to care for your children, regardless of age, your parents and siblings, regardless of where they live, and any member of your household. This last means my grandboss got to take paid time off to care for her platonic roommate who broke bones in an accident and needed to see doctors several times.
I believe time taken off under FMLA is unpaid. If that’s the case, the person is sacrificing a day’s pay for that day off. That would provide some disincentive to take endless days off for frivolous reasons.
Some employers, like mine, have paid FMLA. Tied into our short term/intermittent disability benefit.
It’s not exactly paid FMLA. FMLA itself doesn’t have to be paid, but employers are allowed to require you to use FMLA concurrently with any paid leave or disability benefits so you don’t get to use six weeks of PTO or get six weeks of disability benefits and still have twelve weeks of FMLA leave left to use - the six weeks counts toward both, so you would only have six weeks of FMLA left. But there are plenty of reasons why FMLA would be approved and disability benefits wouldn’t be - for example, you are eligible to take FMLA when a child is placed with you for adoption or foster care. Disability benefits wouldn’t cover that.
It is funny how much work scare quotes can do. If the employee doesn’t have the need, they are not entitled. If the employee does have the need, they aren’t “entitled,” they are entitled.
The employer is permitted to inquire about the need for FMLA, and request documentation thereof. If the employer has information suggesting that the need is not genuine, and they have told the OP this, but not actually exercised their own right to deny the leave… that’s a little bit strange, isn’t it.
After reading this reply, I went back through the thread and found this
Management isn’t powerless because of the FMLA. Management at some level approved the FMLA. Perhaps not MMMs manager , probably an HR manager but it’s not as though Henry just decided he needed FMLA and the company could do nothing about it. And if whichever manager approved it didn’t require documentation and thinks it’s not a genuine need, that’s not Henry’s fault either.
As an aside, this was my ‘scam’ too! But I worked my derriere off. Came in very early and left very late BUT took a long lunch (told boss and coworkers that it would always start at 1 pm… that way, I got an hour from noon to one with no interruptions!).
And I made the most of it. Ate lunch on the way to the gym, worked out, AND caught a quick nap. After lunch, I felt like I was starting a whole new day*.
.
*Which I needed, because each half of my day was about 5 1/2 hours.
If anyone had gotten pissy about it, I’d’ve gone back to a 9-5 schedule without any complaints.
If the schedule slips and nobody cares, then why knock yourself out to meet it? If the schedule slips and your manager’s bosses care, he or she is the one who had better figure out a way of getting resources to improve the situation.
My very excellent first boss taught me that the main job of a manager is to protect their reports from the idiots above them. You can’t always do that, but you can do it most of the time. A manager whose only job seems to be to transmit bullshit from above to the workers is a waste of a good office chair.
I’m skeptical that there are very many managers out there whom you would call “very excellent”. Managers who are above-to-below bullshit transmission conduits are the more common, I think.
If they don’t have the need, they’re violating the actual letter of the law. Which the company can actually check.
What MMM has is unethical hearsay.
This is obviously a diligent, hardworking guy. 
If only he would apply that diligence to doing the job instead of avoiding doing the job, amirite?
Understand, I’m not saying that these employees aren’t gaming the system, or aren’t violating the spirit of their employment agreement. It’s that when employers and the wealthy do the same thing, they aren’t disparaged as malingerers. It’s business, not personal.
Businesses are expected to follow contract terms as they are written, and if they do more it’s because they believe it benefits them, not because they are “responsible” for pitching in, for covering a different business’s mistake, or for making their customer profitable. For a long time, employment has been seen as a gift given from the employer to the employee, rather than a business transaction between peers. That view colors the interaction between employer and employee, and how we perceive each side’s behavior.
Exactly. You can be “entited” in the technical legal sense because you meet the legal requirements, but not be truly entitled in that you don’t really need it by commonly accepted workplace standards and are imposing hardship on your coworkers who need to pick up the slack for you. You do that, and no one can touch you legally, but your coworkers will resent you and consider you selfish, and they will be right.
To clear, I’m not saying that the following applies in this situation, which sounds more like someone who does meet the technical definition, as above. But IME, what you’re saying is not generally correct either.
IME, it’s frequently the case that there’s genuine ambiguity as to whether people in various protected classes do or do not meet some definition under the law.
For example you can get a doctor - who works for you and has no connection to your employer - so certify that you have this or that medical need, even if it’s not at all clear that an unbiased medical professional would certify that. Which is even besides the fact that much of what a doctor says is frequently heavily influenced by the patient’s description of their symptoms. (E.g. it’s pretty well known and accepted by insurers who underwrite disabilty policies that any company which has undergone a lot of layoffs will have a high incidence of disability claims.)
In the face of this ambiguity, employers are very reluctant to challenge claims of this sort, fearing lawsuits, legal penalties, and/or bad publicity.
Bottom line is that saying that a company has the ability to determine the validity of all FMLA claims and that if they fail to do this it’s only due to their own negligence is not at all realistic. And the fact that an employer approved an FMLA claim is not at all an indication that the claim is valid or that the employer was negligent in approving it.
But again, I’m just responding to your comment here and not saying that this applies in the case being discussed here.
IME, employers and the wealthy do the same thing, but they are very widely disparaged. YMMV
Right. But when you work in a hyper-political environment, this type of stuff happens. (And he’s not the worst offender. I almost lost my job in 2017 for wanting to get rid of a completely useless part-time employee who was making $70/hour. Still licking my wounds over that one.) Best to not make waves.
Are you an employer? I gotta say, as a person who’s only ever been an employee for a couple of decades, it has not been my experience that there are many mechanisms to become legally entitled to anything from my employer for nothing. Doesn’t seem like America is that kind of lazy worker’s utopia run amok, from where I’m sitting. It actually seems to me like even the people who are legally entitled to accommodations for real and substantial medical issues mostly don’t get those, and that the set of people who apply for disability benefits is smaller than the set of people who have disabilities.
I agree that there is some kind of spectrum of people who are more or less inclined to take advantage of opportunities to take a day off, and that sort of thing. But if there are a lot of people out there who just go to a doctor, get a made up diagnosis, and then cow their employers into just letting them live high on the hog for nothing, they’re better at this than me. I’ve never had a doctor where I told them my diagnosis!
Actually this is exactly the problem with the OP’s coworker. If what he was doing was universally practiced then he would be OK. But the problem is - as I said in the post you’re responding to - that you have some people who “don’t really need it by commonly accepted workplace standards”, i.e. they are exceptions to the rule. And therefore these people are slackers relative to their coworkers who need to work even harder to pick up their slack, and are justifiably resented for it. If “America is that kind of lazy worker’s utopia run amok”, then you wouldn’t have this type of issue.
I’m not aware of such things happening and that’s not what I was referring to.
The issue is people who have a genuine but relatively minor issue and exagerate the severity of their symptoms and the impact on their lives to their doctors and employers, and/or people who have recovered or largely recovered but carry on as if they still have major issues.
All of that applies to the case of a doctor writing a note or completing an FMLA certification saying that someone was unable to work for four or five days days based solely on symptoms reported by the patient. I don’t think it’s nearly as likely when the doctor has to provide the information on this form for longer or intermittent FMLA leaves. And if the employer has reason to doubt the certification, they can require a second opinion ( and a third if the first two don’t agree) at the employer’s expense. If the employer has reason to doubt the certification and chooses not do that for whatever reason, the fact that they made that choice doesn’t make them powerless.
I’m not at all saying that the approval means the claim is valid or that the employer was negligent in approving it - just that they aren’t powerless* because they chose not to require a second opinion in a case where they doubt the validity.
*at least until a second or third opinion is received
I’ve taken FMLA several times (each one with legitimate reasons, in case Spaceman_Spiff_II was wondering). Each time I used hours in my accumulated bank of sick leave or annual leave to ensure that I missed no paychecks.
My sick leave balance is slowly recovering.
Well, I know it’s what you decided is “exactly the problem” with the OP’s coworker, absent any of us actually knowing anything about the situation. Which is why I asked if you’re an employer.