California Family Rights Act and FMLA

[Guest EDD]

It seems that the two leave periods run consecutively and cannot run concurrently when a female employee goes out on pregnancy disability.

In effect, an employer has to protect the job and benefits of any woman who goes on an LOA for the birth of a child, for as much as 24 weeks. Does

anyone have experience with this?

[Guest jreddi]

In California, we have THREE laws to contend with when an employee goes out on Pregnancy leave: The Federal FMLA, the California Pregnancy Disability Leave Act and the California Family Rights Act.

It is true that FMLA and CFRA cannot run concurrently. The same is true for the PDL and CFRA. PDL and FMLA can run concurrently, though.

Both FMLA and CFRA allow for a maximum of twelve weeks of unpaid leave. PDL, however, states that, once the employee is declared disabled because of pregnancy by her physician, she is entitled up to four months of leave.

So, what we have here is PDL running for four months (16 weeks), FMLA running for 12 weeks concurrently with PDL and CFRA picking up the slack at the end of PDL to run an additional 12 weeks. This gives the employee up to seven months of leave during which her benefits must continue and, at the conclusion of the leave, she must be returned to an equivalent position.

Hope this helps.

John