Legal Question in Business Law in Indiana

FMLA is not a government program; it is a statutory requirement that some � not all � private employers must comply with.

Yes, FMLA can backfire against an employee, endangering that employee's job if someone in that employee's family gets sicker than can be handled in 12 weeks each year. Yes, you have to use vacation time before FMLA kicks in; that is only fair to your employer (remember, employment is a two-way street, and the employer, with a business to run, has to be able to count on employees showing up for work for a certain number of weeks per year; FMLA actually interferes with that, which is why vacation needs to come into the equation. Unfortunately, statutory law governs the main bulk of the American public; it cannot take into account each individual situation.

FMLA provides for better leave than the leave parents had before it was passed to take care of sick kids; pre-FMLA, there was no protection whatsoever for workers with sick kids, sick spouses, or sick parents. Now, workers get 12 weeks' leave per year to take care of their families with a guarantee of their jobs being there when they come back. This is thus a step, however small that step is, toward protecting the individual's job.

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