CA Family Leave Act refers to either the California Family Rights Act (CFRA), California Pregnancy Disability Leave (PDL), or to the federal Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA). All of these Acts apply to covered employers in California and California employees must be “qualified” in order to utilize available time. Qualifications include; work for the employer for a minimum of 1 year (doesn’t need to be consecutive), complete at least 1,250 hours of service to the employer over the past 12 months, and works at a location where the employer has at least 50 employees within 75-miles. Employee qualification requirements are similar across all components of CA Family Leave Act.
The combination of legislations that constitute the CA Family Leave Act represent one of the most employee beneficial packages that any state has to offer. FMLA and CFRA are similar in employee and employer requirements. PDL requires compliance from employers with as few as 5 employees. FMLA and CFRA decrement time concurrently, except FMLA does not recognize a domestic partner as a qualified entity to be cared for, nor does FMLA recognize newborn “bonding” as a qualified reason for leave, whereas CFRA does in both cases, meaning that time would be reduced in both cases from CFRA, but not FMLA. And CFRA does not decrement for pregnancy disability, while FMLA does. Meanwhile, PDL could provide a covered employee more than 17 weeks of leave time for a pregnancy, with doctors orders, and still have 12 weeks remaining for bonding through CFRA. No other state is as sensitive to pregnancy, as the combined CA Family Leave Act.
Elements of the CA Family Leave Act appear to overlap, which causes a great number of covered employers to be concerned with ongoing compliance. Increasing DOL investigations, an increasing cost for FMLA lawsuit defense, and an increasing number of judgments against covered employers has increased attention and concern. Especially, since the target continues to move. The Supreme Court’s recent decision to let states determine their own definition of marriage means that effectively immediately, all spouses of same-sex married employees in California are eligible to be cared for under FMLA, if they are determined to have a serious medical condition, as defined by the FMLA component of the CA Family Leave Act.
Concerned employers have found great satisfaction with the web-based leave administration compliance solutions provided by Qcera’s LeaveSource™ software. Qcera clients administer more than a million employees and include more than a dozen Fortune 500 Companies. LeaveSource™ Express addresses the needs of a small to medium business. LeaveSource™ Enterprise is fully-configurable and scalable to a business of any size. LeaveSource™ Entrust is the hottest outsourcing hybrid on the market. Click on a product tab for more information or request a demonstration to see the system wash away your CA Family Leave Act concerns.