The U.S. Department of Labor yesterday issued its Final Rule on the Family and Medical Leave Act. This will replace the rule issued by the Bush Administration that became effective in 2009 and is primarily intended to address amendments to the FMLA that were enacted by Congress after the the 2009 rule took effect. However, the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for the newest version, issued ...

Employers, has this ever happened to you?

An employee in a critical-but-inflexible position -- say, a customer service representative -- asks for "intermittent" leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act. If the intermittent time off is "scheduled," it's usually not too big a problem. Most employers can manage to work around a situation if they know what to expect. They may be able to ...

Well! OK!

It's been an interesting week, hasn't it? Congratulations to President Obama on winning a second term. My Election 2012 coverage would not be complete without some labor and employment prognostications for Obama Administration II.*

*Please do not read these again in 2016 to see how accurate I was. I don't want to be known as the Dick Morris of employment law bloggers.

All this week, while formulating my questions for our presidential and vice presidential candidates, I avoided reading what my fellow bloggers were asking because I wanted *sniff* to maintain my independence. Actually, I was afraid that their questions would be so good, I'd be tempted to "borrow" too much.

Lois Lane and I have to maintain our journalistic integrity.

Last night, I ...

I was off enjoying the Florida sunshine last weekend while learning the latest techniques in pettifoggery and obfuscation (kidding!), but I hope I'll be making up for it today with a good case answering the musical question: "What does an employer do when it finds out that its employee on 'medical leave' is actually doing stuff?" You know, like working another job, or hanging out at the gun ...

It's been another zany week or so in the world of labor and employment law, rivalling Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Zeppo. Here are a few items that jumped out at me. (Each subhead is a line from a Marx Brothers movie or the title of a Marx Brothers movie. Answers at the end.)

"Hurry up, or you'll be late for jail!" Pepsi Beverages (formerly Pepsi Bottling Co.) agreed to a pre-litigation settlement ...

It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others.

In any event, that must be what the American Medical Association is thinking. The organization took it on the chin this week in a case involving the Family and Medical Leave Act.

The case is well worth a post-mortem because of what it teaches employers about "causation" in retaliation and protected concerted ...

Never . . . well, hardly ever. ("What, never? No, never! What, never? Well . . . hardly ever! He's hardly ever sick at sea . . .")

Our friends at the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission recently scored another big win in a pregnancy discrimination case -- actually got summary judgment against the employer, which is unusual. In this case, the employer apparently knew it had messed up ...

Odds and ends from the employment law world this week:

Facebook rant about wages didn't create retaliation claim. Molly DiBianca of the Delaware Employment Law Blog reports on a decision from a federal court in Florida saying that a Facebook rant about an employer's alleged violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act overtime provisions was not "protected activity" that would trigger ...

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission held a public hearing this week on leave of absence as a reasonable accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

This is a smokin' hot subject, particularly in light of the ADA Amendments Act and its regulations, which expand the ADA's coverage to a dramatically larger population, the "new," more activist EEOC under Chair ...