2000 DOL Survey: 24 Million Used FMLA Leave; Four Million More Needed but Couldn´t Afford Leave

From Family and Medical Leave Handbook, ©Thompson Publishing Group, Inc.

The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) is "working well for tens of millions of Americans," then-Secretary of Labor Alexis M. Herman said as she announced the release of a Department of Labor (DOL) FMLA survey on Jan. 11. The 2000 survey follows up on one conducted by the Department in 1995. The survey report, Balancing the Needs of Families and Employers, was issued only days before President William J. Clinton - for whom the FMLA was his earliest and perhaps his proudest legislative achievement - left the presidency to his successor, President George W. Bush.

Some 35 million workers have availed themselves of the FMLA´s leave provisions since the law was enacted in 1993. The FMLA covers one out of nine establishments and about three out of five employees, although the percentage of covered employees declined slightly in the five years between the two surveys. While 11 percent of establishments were covered by the FMLA in both 1995 and 2000, 58 percent of employees worked in covered establishments in 2000, compared to 59 percent five years earlier.

The 2000 survey report analyzed more than 4,000 telephone interviews with both workers and employers, in which respondents were asked about any leave taken in the 18-month period between January 1999 and June 2000. During that time, about one in six workers took FMLA leave. Because of growth in the workforce, the number of leave-takers grew from 20 million to 24 million, although the percentage of workers who took leave scarcely changed over the period ­- 16 percent in 1995, 17 percent in 2000. Some six million employees (about 4 percent of the workforce) took more than one leave during the 18-month period.

The majority of workers polled in 2000 took far less FMLA leave than the 60-day, 12-week maximum permitted under the statute. Over half took 10 days or fewer, more than one in four took 11-40 days, and fewer than one in 10 took 41-60 days. One in 10 workers took more than 60 days.

While FMLA leave is most commonly used for an employee´s own serious health conditions, the percentage of leave-takers using FMLA for their own illnesses fell between 1995 and 2000. The 1995 survey found that 61 percent of leave-takers used their longest FMLA leave for their own health, while in 2000, that proportion was 47 percent. Intermittent leave was also most likely to be for that purpose - 35 percent of intermittent leaves in 1995, and 50 percent in 2000, were used for the employee´s own health. Only a small percentage of such leave   - 15 percent - was intermittent, however.

The use of intermittent leave had no impact on productivity, according to 82 percent of small establishments (those employing 250 or fewer employees), while 66 percent of larger employers agreed. One in six small employers (17 percent) said intermittent leave had a negative impact, as did 32 percent of larger employers.

Leave-Needers

Another group of employees needed FMLA leave but for one reason or another - usually because they could not afford it - did not take it. During the survey period, 2 percent of employees, or four million people, needed leave they could not take.

Between the 1995 and 2000 surveys, the number of so-called "leave-needers" dropped considerably, from 3 percent of the workforce to 2 percent. The survey found that employees were most likely to forego taking leave to care for their own health; 48 percent of leave-needers did so in both 1995 and 2000. Employees who could not afford to take needed leave constituted almost two-thirds (66 percent) of leave-needers in 1995, and more than three-quarters (78 percent) in 2000.

The survey also discovered that only about half of all establishments, whether covered by the FMLA or non-covered, offer any kind of paid leave. Some three-quarters of covered establishments offer paid sick leave; 63 percent offer disability leave; 95 percent, vacation; and 43 percent, other paid time off.

Both Awareness and Compliance Dip

Employers told pollsters in 2000 that they found the FMLA more difficult to administer than they had five years earlier. While 85 percent of establishments termed the FMLA easy to comply with in 1995, only 64 percent agreed in 2000. The 15 percent that had found it difficult in 1995 more than doubled in 2000, to 36 percent.

While some positive assessments of the FMLA´s effect on employers have grown since the 1995 survey, negative opinions seem to have grown more sharply. Furthermore, employers and employees have markedly different views of the impact the FMLA has on their worklives. For example, when asked in 2000 to rate the effect of the FMLA on their establishment´s productivity, just 7 percent of establishments said the effect was positive, while more than twice as many employees - 16 percent - did. Approximately the same proportion of each called the FMLA´s effect on productivity negative: 16 percent of employers versus 17 percent of employees.

Covered employers find complying with the FMLA somewhat burdensome, but non-covered employers tend to exaggerate the impact the FMLA would have on their businesses if they were covered by the law. For example, while over half the non-covered employers anticipate that complying with the FMLA would have a negative effect on productivity, only 16 percent of covered employers have had that experience. At the same time, non-covered employers are more than twice as likely as covered employers to believe the FMLA would have a positive effect on profitability (7 percent to 3 percent).

Knowledge of the FMLA has actually declined in the five years between the two surveys. Both surveys show that about three in five employees covered by the act (59 percent) have heard of the FMLA. However, while 87 percent of covered employers knew they were covered in 1995, that percentage had dropped to 84 percent by the 2000 survey. Perhaps not surprisingly, only 84 percent of FMLA-covered employers are fully in compliance with the FMLA, providing employees with 12 weeks of unpaid leave for all FMLA-qualifying reasons: the employee´s own health, maternity, infant care, a child´s placement in adoption or foster care, or care of a family member with a serious health condition. In other words, one in six establishments does not know it is covered and does not comply fully with the law, or does so only sometimes (answering "it depends" on the survey).

At the same time, employers have cut back on provision of legally mandated FMLA benefits. While the 1995 poll revealed that 95 percent of FMLA-covered employers maintained health care benefits for an employee on FMLA leave for his or her own serious health condition, as they are required to do, by 2000 that had dropped to 87 percent. The percentage of employers offering leave for other FMLA reasons also dropped by seven to 10 percentage points. Pregnant women are most likely to be permitted time off, to retain their health insurance coverage, and to be guaranteed a job on returning to work. Employees, even when covered by the act, are least likely to be permitted to take time off for adoption or foster care placement.

The DOL contracted with Westat, a Rockville, Md., company, to conduct the poll, as they had the 1995 poll. Pollsters from Westat were David Cantor, Jeffrey Kerwin, Mareena McKinley Wright, Kerry Levin, John Rauch, Tracey Hagerty and Martha Stapleton Kudela. Jane Waldfogel, of the Columbia University School of Social Work, also worked on the survey.

The 2000 telephone poll compiled responses from 2,558 interviews with employees and 1,839 interviews of establishments. The survey report, Balancing the Needs of Families and Employers, is available at http://www.dol.gov/dol/asp/public/fmla/main2000.htm.