Labor & Employment Law

Family and Medical Leave Extended to Flight Crews

By James Parks

Airline flight crews will soon have the same family and medical leave coverage other working Americans have enjoyed since 1993. The House of Representatives approved legislation yesterday amending the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) to allow airline pilots and flight attendants to qualify for leave. The bill now goes to President Obama, who is expected to sign it.

The FMLA requires state agencies and private employers with more than 50 employees to give workers up to 12 weeks off to care for themselves or a family member. But because of the unique way their work hours are counted, pilots and flight attendants have found it difficult?if not impossible?to meet the 1,250-hour-per-year threshold required for FMLA eligibility.

Pilot duty time is capped at 1,000 hours per year. For flight attendants, hours on the job between flights or on mandatory standby do not count toward their FMLA credit, making it virtually impossible for them to qualify for this important coverage.

“Congress never intended to exclude flight crews from this coverage,” says Edward Wytkind, president of the AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department.

But flight attendants and pilots have had to trade away other benefits in contract negotiations in order to receive Family and Medical Leave Act coverage that should have been theirs from the start.

It’s time that flight attendants and pilots get family and medical leave just like millions of other American workers.

Rep. Tim Bishop (D-N.Y.) authored the Airline Flight Crew Technical Corrections Act.  Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) introduced a companion bill, which the Senate passed last month.

Patricia Friend, president of the Flight Attendants-CWA, praised Bishop for sponsoring the bill.

We are very pleased at the passage of Congressman Bishop’s FMLA bill, which finally addresses loopholes in the current language that have denied many flight attendants from qualifying for coverage. Every flight attendant in this country is so grateful to Tim Bishop for passing this legislation on such a strong bipartisan basis.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on December 03, 2009 (boomark / email).