The Essential Guide to Family & Medical Leave

chapter 3 | is the employee covered by the FMLA? | 37
Now that you know that the FMLA applies to your company, it’s time
to figure out which employees the law protects. Not every employee
who works for a covered employer is entitled to leave. An employee
must have worked for your company for at least one year, and at least 1,250
hours during the preceding year, to be entitled to leave. In addition, your
company must have at least 75 employees within a 50-mile radius of the
employee’s worksite.
Keeping all these numbers can get complicated. There are detailed rules
on which hours count toward the minimum, how you measure the 75
miles, and when you make these determinations. And it’s not a one-time
calculation: An employee who was eligible for—and took—FMLA leave
in the past might no longer qualify later; similarly, an employee who isn’t
entitled to FMLA leave today might become eligible sometime in the future.
You’ll have to decide whether an employee is entitled to FMLA leave on a
case-by-case basis, every time an employee requests leave.
This chapter explains each part of the eligibility process: how to do the
necessary calculations, how to track an employee’s eligibility, and how to
keep proper records that will allow you to quickly determine whether an
employee meets these requirements.
Employee Eligibility, Step by Step
To be eligible for FMLA leave, an employee must:
• work at a worksite with 50 or more employees within a 75-mile radius
• have worked for your company for at least 12 months, and
• have worked at least 1,250 hours in the 12 months immediately
preceding the leave.
If an employee doesn’t meet all three of these requirements, the employee
is not entitled to FMLA leave.
Step 1: Are There 50 Employees Within 75 Miles?
To figure out whether a specific employee is entitled to FMLA leave, you first
need to figure out whether there are 50 or more employees at the employee’s