Family Leave Guarantees Up to 12 Weeks of Coverage
Q: We provide medical insurance for our hourly workers. The company pays 60% and the employees pay 40% if they elect to be covered.
If an employee is out of work for more than a month because of a work-related injury can we ask the employee to pay the entire cost of medical coverage?
If an employee takes a personal leave, can we also ask that the employee pay 100%? If an employee cancels coverage because he or she does not want to pay, are there any laws governing reinstatement? Or is this the call of our insurer?
--G.C., Placentia
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A: Under the Family and Medical Leave Act, eligible employees are entitled to take up to 12 weeks of medical leave for “serious health conditions,” which include most work-related injuries. For the FMLA to apply, the employer must have at least 50 employees, and the employee must have been employed essentially full time for at least a year.
Under an FMLA-covered leave, the employee’s health insurance must be continued for the duration of the leave (up to 12 weeks) on the same basis as when the employee was working. Thus, in the situation you describe, if the leave is FMLA-covered, you would have to continue paying 60% of the premium for up to 12 weeks.
The FMLA does not apply to personal leaves of absence, so you can require those employees on such leaves to pay the entire cost of their coverage while they are on leave. If they let their coverage lapse, their ability to reinstate their coverage will typically depend on the terms of the insurance plan.
--James J. McDonald Jr.
Attorney, Fisher & Phillips
Labor law instructor, UC Irvine
Complaint May Be Worse Than Tax
Q: My company gives what it calls performance credits--money placed in a credit card account that employees can use at specified stores.
I was given $170 a month on the card from September to December, but the company didn’t include the income on my W-2 form. Now, it has added the amount this year, which will place me in a higher tax bracket.
I was told that the income was recorded late because they were behind in their bookkeeping. It doesn’t seem fair that I will be penalized because of bookkeeping delays. Do I have any legal recourse?
--D.I., Venice
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A: Employers are required to correctly report income to the IRS. Failure to do so could subject them to civil penalties or criminal liability.
If you received income in a different tax period, technically the company should have amended its reports for that period to include your income. It is improper for a company to subject you to higher tax liability and damages because it did not fulfill its tax reporting responsibilities.
You might have another issue, however. The actual value of your income may in fact be less than $170 per month. The money allocated to you had to be used at certain stores. Because it could not be used for general purposes--such as paying rent, for example--it would not have been as valuable as unrestricted cash.
Customarily, the real value of such credits would be recomputed at a lesser amount for submission to the IRS. Thus, the $170 per month being reported to the IRS might be too high.
Even though the delay in reporting this income has placed you in a higher tax bracket, keep in mind that perhaps you’ve gotten a free ride on the tax payment for three to six months. You should also consider that the taxes paid on the card are probably minimal, perhaps only $200 or so.
Is it worth complaining over an amount like that, especially when it would be very burdensome for the employer to go back and amend the tax returns for you and perhaps all other employees as well?
--Don D. Sessions
Employee rights attorney
Mission Viejo
Docking of Salaried Workers’ Pay
Q: A recent Shop Talk column stated that employees must be paid their regular salaries “without regard to the number of hours they work” and that an employer “will pay a high price if it regularly docks salaried employees’ pay.”
What about a salaried employee who exceeds company policy for allowable vacation days and sick days? Can he or she be docked?
--A.M., Pasadena
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A: A company can require that salaried employees use vacation and sick pay when they are absent from work for a full day or part of a day. But once they have exhausted their paid time off, the employer cannot legally dock them for an absence of less than a full day.
In other words, salaried employees can be docked for absences of a full day, but they can never be docked for coming to work late, taking a long lunch or leaving early.
--Joseph L. Paller Jr.
Union, employee attorney
Gilbert & Sackman
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If you have a question about an on-the-job situation, please mail it to Shop Talk, Los Angeles Times, P.O. Box 2008, Costa Mesa, CA 92626; dictate it to (714) 966-7873, or e-mail it to shoptalk@latimes.com. Include your initials and hometown. The Shop Talk column is designed to answer questions of general interest. It should not be construed as legal advice.
