LABOR FORMALLY PROTESTS BUSH FAMILY LEAVE WEAKENING

Friday, April 18, 2008

(PAI)

WASHINGTON (PAI)—Organized labor joined leading women’s rights groups in formally protesting the GOP Bush regime’s proposed rules to weaken the Family and Medical Leave Act.

In a lengthy statement sent to the Labor Department at the April 11 deadline, AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney formally demanded the Bush regime withdraw its proposals, which make it harder for workers to take family and medical leave.

Responding to pressure from businesses, that opposed FMLA before it finally passed after a long struggle 15 years ago, the Bush regime wants to make it easier for companies to get their workers’ medical records, harder for workers to take intermittent leave for such things as doctors’ appointments, and force workers to re-justify getting the unpaid leave even for chronic conditions or treatments, such as chemotherapy.

“Workers gain very little under this proposal,” the federation’s comments to DOL said. “The Family and Medical Leave Act is working. The department’s own research says so,” AFL-CIO President John Sweeney added, citing a DOL study that found workers taking FMLA had little effect on business growth, productivity and profitability.

“These proposed regulations are nothing more than a goodbye gift” from the Bush regime “to business interests who have been trying to gut the Family and Medical Leave Act since it was enacted and (who) found an eager partner in Labor Secretary Elaine Chao,” he added. FMLA changes the AFL-CIO opposed include:

* Limiting workers’ ability to take earned paid leave while on FMLA. This would drastically reduce FMLA’s positive effect, the fed said. “DOL’s data shows availability of paid leave not only affects whether employees take FMLA leave, but is the single most important determinant of whether someone who needs leave actually takes it.”

* Letting employers get a worker’s health information from the worker’s doctor without asking permission from the worker, and without the company using its own doctor—and the doctor’s promise of confidentiality—to do so. “These changes would jeopardize the confidentiality of employee medical information and provide employers with opportunities to abuse the information they receive,” the AFL-CIO wrote.

* Requiring workers to visit doctors more often to get medical paperwork needed to justify family and medical leave. It gave the example of a worker with asthma who occasionally has to take FMLA for a day because of an attack, and would now, under Bush rules, have to go to the doctor twice a year to certify the asthma still exists.

* Forcing workers to give advance notice for “intermittent leave” such as for doctors’ appointments. ###