June 2001

WIN AT WORK MONTHLY

A Community Service of DON D. SESSIONS, A PROFESSIONAL LAW CORP., Employee Rights Attorneys
	Win At Work REINSTATEMENT MEDICAL RIGHTS AFTER MEDICAL LEAVE An employee may have a right to be reinstated to a former job upon returning from medical leave. The Family and Medical Leave Act generally applies to an employee who has worked for an employer with over 50 employees for at least 12 months. The law provides for an unpaid leave up to 12 weeks in a 12‑month period for a serious health condition of the employee or certain family members. Aside from certain narrow exceptions, an employer must make the same or comparable job available, with equivalent benefits, pay, and other terms and conditions of employment, unless the employee fails to return at the conclusion of the leave. Sometimes the 12‑week period may extend indefinitely if the employer fails to give a required notice to the employee to start the leave period. Losing a job does not need to be the penalty for being sick . . . if you know your rights.		Employee Rights Update PUNISHED: SENT HOME WITHOUT PAY If you are non-exempt (paid on an hourly basis), and violate a company rule, your employer may suspend you for one day or several days, without pay. But a new case reaffirms that exempt (salaried) employees are subject to different rules. Under Federal law, because they are paid weekly, such employees cannot be suspended without pay for disciplinary reasons for partial weeks, except for a major safety violation. Non-safety suspensions must be for a full week, or not at all. Going further, if the employer does have a practice of suspending salaried employees for partial weeks, its salaried staff may no longer qualify for the salaried overtime exemption, meaning the employer must pay them overtime for all hours worked over 40 in a week. In other words, if salaried employees are treated as “hourly” for disciplinary purposes, they might qualify for overtime, if it happens often enough. - Mark J. Keough, Attorney
		Update on our attorneys – The state bill authored by Don Sessions and Stephen Kimball to expand the rights of employees to copy their own personnel file has now passed the State Assembly and is headed for approval by the Senate and Governor Davis. Patrick Turner participated in a mock trail sponsored by third graders at a local elementary school.
Look for our answers to employees’ questions in the "Shop Talk" column of the Los Angeles Times’ Sunday Business Section or the “Life and Work Q & A” column of the Orange County Register’s "Business Monday" magazine. Click here to add (or here to delete) your E-mail address to or from our monthly mailing list. For more employee rights information or for past issues of Win at Work Monthly, click here for our website, job-law.com; here to order our book, Employee Rights in California; or contact our office directly at 23456 Madero, Suite 170, Mission Viejo, CA 92691, (949) 380-0900, (800) 774-7494, mailto:attorneys@job-law.com. The Win at Work portion of Win at Work Monthly is from our ongoing syndicated column appearing in Times/Mirror Publications (including Los Angeles Jobs and Orange County Jobs) and elsewhere. Win at Work Monthly is intended for general information and should not be construed as legal advice or opinion. Readers in need of legal advice should promptly retain the services of an attorney. ©2001 by Don D. Sessions.