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On October 1, 2003 revisions to Connecticut’s Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) went into effect. Connecticut employers must now allow employees to take up to two weeks of accumulated sick leave to attend to a serious health condition of a covered family member or for the birth or adoption of a child. In addition, employers may now count the twenty-four month period during which the FMLA leave may be taken in one of four different ways.
Below are some answers to commonly asked questions about these revisions.
Q: Are short term disability benefits impacted by these revisions?
A: No. The law specifically states that the paid time off provision applies only to an employer’s written policies providing compensation for loss of wages occasioned by illness and does not apply to compensation that is provided through an employer’s plan, including short or long term disability plans.
Q: What does this mean for policies that specifically state that sick time is intended to cover absences for the employee’s own sickness, and not for the sickness of family members?
A: Such policies must be revised. An employer may still have such a restriction for absences related to a family member’s illness that does not rise to the level of a serious health condition under Connecticut law. For medical conditions that meet the definition of a serious health condition, however, employees must be allowed to use accumulated sick time if the leave is for a child, spouse, parent or parent-in-law.