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Tracking Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and/or California Family Rights Act (CFRA) leave can be its own battle for leave administrators due to the complexities around intermittent leave.
Under the CFRA/FMLA leave rules, an eligible employee may take up to 12 weeks of leave in a designated 12-month period. The regulations highlight that “weeks” under these laws means the employee’s regular workweek. The leave does not have to be taken all at once and often is dictated by the qualifying reason for the leave.
In the case of intermittent leave, employers will need to break down the employee’s 12 weeks of leave into days and hours and track from there.
For example, if an employee who ordinarily works five days a week needs two days off, multiply the 12 weeks by the five days to get 60 total days that the employee may have off in the 12-month tracking period. Every day used for leave gets subtracted from the balance until the 12-month period resets or the employee exhausts the leave.
An employer’s holiday policy can affect how leave is tracked depending upon the reason for the leave. Both the CFRA and FMLA regulations are consistent with how to track leave accounting for a holiday in that workweek.
For example, an employer closes the workplace for the Fourth of July holiday. In this case, if the employee is taking a full workweek off during the week in which the Fourth of July holiday falls, then the employee still will have a full workweek deducted from their leave balance.
If, instead, the employee is taking intermittent leave and works some days in the workweek and takes other days off for CFRA/FMLA leave in the same workweek, then only those days taken for CFRA/FMLA leave will count and the day off for the holiday will not count.
If the employer scheduled the employee to work on the holiday and the employee does not work the holiday for CFRA/FMLA reasons, then the employer may deduct that day from the employee’s leave bank.
The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) reinforced this position in a recent opinion letter responding to a question whether we should consider the workweek in which a holiday falls to be a shortened workweek for intermittent tracking.
Read more about “Holidays During Leave” on CFRA and FMLA Employer Coverage in the HR Library.