- Leave laws in Pennsylvania mostly follow federal standards.Legal Law Justice image by Stacey Alexander from Fotolia.com
The Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) is a Federal regulation that allows eligible employees 12 weeks of unpaid leave during a 12-month period for certain circumstances: to care for a newborn or adopted child, to care for an immediate family member who is ill or to receive care if you are unable to work due to a health condition.
In Pennsylvania, the FMLA rules are mostly the same as the federal level, with a few exceptions regarding child care and organ donation leave. - Under federal law, employers who have 50 or more employees that work at least 20 weeks out of the year are required to follow the Family Medical Leave Act. Pennsylvania has addition standards for employers. If you employ four or more people, you are required to follow FMLA for pregnancy and child care purposes. You also must offer leave for organ and bone marrow donors.
Employee eligibility laws are the same as the federal laws. Employees need to have worked for at least 12 months and 1,250 hours in order to be covered under FMLA. - Under federal law, employers are required to offer up to 12 weeks of leave during a 12-month period. That amount is increased to up to 26 weeks if the leave is to care for a child, spouse or parent who is ill, temporarily disabled or on out-patient status.
Pennsylvania does not have any additional requirements on the length of leave. However, individual employers may offer additional leave. - In Pennsylvania, pregnancy must be treated the same as a temporary disability. Additionally, in regard to pregnancy and child care leave, the terms for compensation, hiring, tenure and conditions of employment cannot be based on gender. In other words, the child care leave policies must be the same for male and female employees.
- Advertisement -
- Advertisement -
