Source AFL-CIO NOW Blog
For 15 years, some 200,000 flight attendants, pilots and other air crew members have been denied the protection of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) because of a
loophole in the law.
Yesterday, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to close that loophole.
The FMLA requires employees to work a minimum of 1,250 hours a year to qualify for coverage. But air crew hours are calculated on “flight hours”—only from the time a plane pulls away from the gate until it arrives at its destination. Flight attendants and pilots receive no credit for time spent working on the ground. Few flight attendants meet the requirement, and safety rules even prevent pilots from exceeding more than 1,000 hours of flight time a year.
The bill, approved (402–9) yesterday, establishes a new formula to calculate FMLA eligibility for air crews. Says Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA-CWA) President Patricia Friend:
Today is a major victory for the tens of thousands of airline workers who have repeatedly been denied access to this vital law that has benefited working families for over a decade….We have been working for years to clarify current FMLA language and thanks to the tens of thousands of letters and phone calls from AFA-CWA flight attendants to their representatives, we were able to press the importance of this issue and reach this historic milestone.The FMLA provides workers up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave a year to take care of a newborn or newly adopted child, a sick family member or themselves.
Because the U.S. Department of Labor and the courts have refused to close the loophole, AFA-CWA, the Air Line Pilots (ALPA) and other unions have been forced to negotiate family leave provisions in their contracts. Last month, at a House hearing marking the 15th anniversary of the landmark leave law, AFA-CWA member Jennifer Hunt told the Education and Labor’s Workforce Protections Subcommittee that because she didn’t meet the 1,250-hour threshold, she was denied FMLA leave to care for her Iraqi war veteran husband who was battling cancer.--snip--
A Senate version of the bill, S. 2059, introduced by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), has 26 bipartisan co-sponsors, including Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).
Full Story:
http://blog.aflcio.org/2008/05/21/house-oks-bill-bringing-flight-attendants-pilots-under-fmla-umbrella/
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
