Few workers invoke US family-leave law

Julie Shields and her husband, Ed Peartree, planned well ahead for the births of their children.

They squirreled away some savings so she could take an unpaid leave from her law firm to be with their firstborn. They followed the same plan for the arrival of their second daughter, except this time it was Ed's turn to take a break from work.

US law entitled each to take time off from work for family reasons – without pay – and still hold onto their jobs. But their experiences could not have been more different.

Ms. Shields, an expert on the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), worked for a Washington law firm that was "positive and supportive" about her leave. Mr. Peartree, though, ran headlong into co-worker resentment and managerial resistance. One colleague sniped that she should get to stay home and play with her dogs, and a senior boss, a father of five, warned Ed not to take a month off because it would have a negative effect on his career, his wife recounts.

The couple is among the 60 percent of America's workers who are eligible to take a prolonged leave from work for family reasons. They are also among the few who actually do.

Since Congress enacted the FMLA with great fanfare almost a decade ago, employers report that 6.5 percent of workers have used the law to take time off – up from 3.6 in 1995.

Workplace pressures like those Peartree encountered are a deterrent. Indeed, in a long-standing lawsuit brought by a former Maryland State trooper who sought to take a parental leave under FMLA, his employer's refusal to grant it may cost the state – or his supervisor – dearly. A federal judge is poised to decide the damage award before Labor Day.

But an even bigger obstacle, according to a year-old federal study, is that most workers feel they cannot afford to take up to 12 weeks off without pay.

"The FMLA is almost worthless for most American workers because it is unpaid and therefore rarely utilized, and then usually by ... higher-income workers," says Shields, who became expert in the law while writing a just-published book on shared parenting.

The law is intended to help workers balance family and career – particularly at challenging times such as the birth of a child or a serious health problem within the family. Indeed, it provides job security for people facing such situations, even if it does not provide financial security in the form of paid leave. (Paid leave exists under federal disability law, but care for family members is not included.)

In a 2000 survey by the Society for Human Resource Management, two-thirds of the human-resource managers polled reported that, because of the FMLA, their companies have kept some employees who would have otherwise been fired for failure to meet attendance standards.

But there's a growing sense within the workforce that FMLA is not enough.

"Protection offered by the FMLA is limited in comparison to the pressure [on workers] created by competing demands," says Joshua Davis, an employment law expert at the Boston law firm of Hill & Barlow. "The work-life balance is, as working people know and the day-to-day experience of employers demonstrates, a constant issue."

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