Vets & Their Families & the FMLA
from my listserv.
wm
Dear MomsRising Member,
Following on the heels of reports that there are now 4,000 dead and over 30,000 [1] U.S. soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan, was the news that essential help to military families could get held up at the Department of Labor. Why? Because help for military families got lumped in with proposed rules which could restrict working families’ access to the FMLA. This means that military families could end up waiting for months for their expanded leave while we fight to keep the FMLA intact and widely available for everyone.
Tell the Department of Labor to stop FMLA rollbacks and to protect military families now.
(Commenting is easy! When you click the action link, you’ll find a sample comment from MomsRising for you to edit. Personalize your comment as much as possible–and include any stories you have of needing, or taking, family or medical leave to care for yourself, a new baby, or family member.)
Many military families are struggling and need immediate help. Denise Bittle in Boston has sacrificed three jobs in order to care for her husband, who was severely injured in a 2003 suicide bombing in Baghdad[2]. Like an estimated 14,000[3] other families in this country, Denise is struggling to make ends meet while caring for an injured veteran and their five year old son.
Denise, like many others, needs time to care for her loved ones without fear of losing her job. Both soldiers and their families are contributing to the U.S. as a whole, and should not bear the cost of their contribution alone. The Department of Labor needs to hear from you that they are going in the wrong direction.
THE ISSUE LOWDOWN: In January, Congress passed and the President signed a bill to expand the FMLA to allow family members of service members serving in Iraq and Afghanistan up to 26 weeks of job protected, unpaid leave to care for injured service members and up to 12 weeks of leave to help them when their family member is deployed. The Department of Labor is now working to implement the FMLA expansion for military families. But in the name of efficiency, it lumped the implementation of these new provisions in with a series of proposed rules that are completely unrelated to the expansion for military families.
While the military family piece expands the FMLA, the other proposed rules could restrict workers’ access to the FMLA. The result? Military families could end up waiting for months for their expanded leave while we fight to keep the FMLA intact and widely available for everyone.
Please send a letter to the Department today asking them to move forward quickly with the military expansion, and to hold back on the other set of proposed regulation changes which are unrelated to the military family issue and could restrict workers’ access to the FMLA. (And don’t forget to edit the sample comments and personalize as much as possible–feel free to include any stories you have of needing, or taking, family or medical leave to care for a new baby or family member.)
Forward this message on to your friends. Regardless of what each of us thinks about the war, providing support to the military families is crucial–and we also need to care for all families by stopping the proposed rollbacks of the FMLA. The more comments the Department of Labor receives, the more quickly they’ll be to help military families. And, they need to hear that the FMLA should not be scaled back either.
*Here’s that action link again in case you need it.
Thank you–Katie, Kristin, Joan, Roz, Mary, and the MomsRising Team
p.s. Special thank you to the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America and the National Partnership for Women and Families for their work on this issue.
, 
.