What are the FMLA requirements for employers with 50 or more employees who are not all within a 75-mile radius?
To be eligible for Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) leave, an employee must work at a location that has 50 employees within a 75-mile radius. This so-called 50/75 rule can create confusion for employers that have 50 or more employees total but with no locations that have 50 workers within a 75-mile radius.
If an employer has 50 employees but no locations with 50 employees within a 75-mile radius, none of the employees would be eligible to take FMLA leave.
That employer, nevertheless, still would be subject to the FMLA's notice and posting requirements. FMLA regulation 825.300 states:
(1) Every employer covered by the FMLA is required to post and keep posted on its premises, in conspicuous places where employees are employed, a notice explaining the Act's provisions and providing information concerning the procedures for filing complaints of violations of the Act with the Wage and Hour Division. The notice must be posted prominently where it can be readily seen by employees and applicants for employment. The poster and the text must be large enough to be easily read and contain fully legible text. Electronic posting is sufficient to meet this posting requirement as long as it otherwise meets the requirements of this section. An employer that willfully violates the posting requirement may be assessed a civil money penalty by the Wage and Hour Division not to exceed $110 for each separate offense.
(2) Covered employers must post this general notice even if no employees are eligible for FMLA leave.
Detailed information on determining whether 50 employees are employed within 75 miles is found in FMLA regulation 825.111. Particularly significant to this situation is the regulation's clarification for offsite workers. The regulation states, "An employee's personal residence is not a worksite in the case of employees, such as salespersons, who travel a sales territory and who generally leave to work and return from work to their personal residence, or employees who work at home, as under the concept of flexiplace or telecommuting. Rather, their worksite is the office to which they report and from which assignments are made."
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