Managing Leave of Absences During the Holidays

For many employers, the holiday season means office parties, ugly sweater days, and several company-recognized holidays. If you are wondering how these holidays affect employees on family and medical leaves of absence, you are not alone. Below, we answer some common questions to make your holiday to-do list a little lighter.

Family and Medical Leave Rights Refresher

The California Family Rights Act (CFRA) and the federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) require covered employers (5 or more employees for CFRA; 50 or more for FMLA) to provide twelve weeks of unpaid job-protected leave in a twelve-month period to eligible employees for family and medical leave reasons. These include:

• A serious health condition of the employee or their family member,
• Bonding with a new child, and
• Certain exigencies relating to a family member’s active duty or call to active duty in the military.
• Under FMLA, up to 26 weeks of leave can be used to care for a child, parent, or spouse with an injury or illness attributable to military service.

Twelve weeks means twelve of the employee’s regularly scheduled workweeks.

• Example: Joe works five 8-hour days per week. The twelve-week entitlement under CFRA and FMLA would be 60 days.

How do we track the employees’ CFRA and/or FMLA leave during a workweek that includes a company-recognized holiday?

If the employee takes a full workweek of CFRA and/or FMLA leave and a holiday falls within the week, the full week is counted as a week of CFRA and/or FMLA leave.

• Example: Company recognizes Christmas Day as a holiday. Joe is a full-time employee (5 days a week, 8 hours a day). He takes the entire workweek (Monday, December 22 through Friday, December 26) as CFRA/FMLA leave.
  • One full workweek is counted as CFRA/FMLA leave.

However, if an employee is not taking CFRA/FMLA for a full workweek, such as when the employee is taking leave on an intermittent basis, the holiday will NOT count against their CFRA/FMLA leave entitlement unless the employee was scheduled and expected to work on the holiday.

• Example: During the workweek of December 22-26, Joe works two days (Monday and Tuesday) and takes CFRA/FMLA leave for two days (Wednesday and Friday). Thursday, December 25, is a Company-recognized holiday, and Joe was not expected or scheduled to work that day.
  • Only two days (2/5 of a workweek) are counted as CFRA/FMLA leave.

What if our business closes down for the holidays?

If your business has closed down for one or more full weeks, such as a winter break, then the days your operations/activities have ceased do not count against the employees’ CFRA and/or FMLA entitlement.

Are employees on CFRA and/or FMLA leave entitled to holiday pay?

This is a separate question from whether leave is counted as CFRA and/or FMLA leave. Private employers, except for those with certain government contracts or collective bargaining agreements, are not required to provide holiday pay. If an employer chooses to provide paid holidays, whether to pay for holidays during a leave of absence will depend in large part on the employer’s policy. Employees on CFRA and/or FMLA leave should be eligible for holiday pay on the same conditions as employees on other types of leave.

Employer policies should address the availability of holiday pay during an unpaid portion of a leave of absence as well as during other paid absences.  Employers should follow their policies for employees on unpaid and paid CFRA and/or FMLA leave accordingly.

• Example: if your policy would allow an employee using vacation during the week of Christmas to receive holiday pay for Christmas Day instead of being charged a vacation day, an employee using CFRA and/or FMLA leave during that week should not be treated differently with respect to receiving vacation vs holiday pay for Christmas Day simply because they are using CFRA and/or FMLA leave. (Whether Christmas Day would count as CFRA and/or FMLA leave would be determined by the rules above.)

Have questions about leaves of absence? They are often unique and individual scenarios, so we encourage you to reach out to us by telephone, email, or LiveChat.