The Associated Press (through this The Hartford Business Journal article) is reporting that the final revisions to the Family and Medical Leave Act regulations are to be released on Monday (November 17th), and will include new rules defining how families of wounded service members will be able to take unpaid leave to care for them.

Among the other changes, the new regulations will:

  • Allow employers to require "fitness-for-duty" evaluations for workers who took FMLA time and are returning to jobs that could endanger themselves or others.
     
  • Allow businesses to exclude from perfect attendance awards employees who took FMLA time.
     
  • Prohibit an employee’s direct supervisor from getting an employee’s medical information when a medical certification is needed under FMLA.

The new regulations will be effective January 16th. I’ll post an update when more details become available.  The regulations are over 762 pages long so it may take some time to go through.

Expect to hear a lot about this for the next few weeks.