Separated by an ocean and worlds apart, Anne and Andy Sapp were feeling the affects of war on different fronts.
During the year that he served in Iraq as an Army National Guardsman, his wife struggled to pay the bills and care for two kids at home - while worrying about keeping her job. She used up all her time off from her teaching job in Concord, then had to ask for a string of unpaid days for illnesses or emergencies.
"Even as understanding as school administrators were, it was really uncomfortable for me to take days off, to ask for them, when I knew they didn't have to give them to me," says Sapp, whose husband, also a teacher in Concord, returned from Iraq in late 2005. "On top of all the other stresses, there was that other stress."
Working military families now have one less burden from war, with the first-ever expansion late last month of the 15-year-old Family and Medical Leave Act. The 1993 law gives eligible workers 12 weeks off a year if they are seriously ill, or if they are caring for a new baby or seriously ill child, spouse or parent.
And now family members who are caring for a wounded soldier or who need time off in connection with their soldier's deployment can get FMLA leave. The changes give spouses such as Sapp and others needed job security during times of war and loss - although critics point out that unpaid time off is only a partial helping hand.
"The problem remains that it's an unpaid leave, which is a tremendous problem for so many military families who are living on shoestring budgets," says Nancy Lessin, a founder of the advocacy group Military Families Speak Out, who lives in Jamaica Plain.
What does the new law do? To be eligible, employees must meet the original FMLA requirements. They must work for an employer with 50 or more workers within a 75-mile radius of the worksite, and be employed there for at least a year, completing 1,250 hours of work in the year before the leave.
Expanding both the length of leave and the circle of eligible caregiver-relatives, the new entitlements allow up to six months off to those caring for a spouse, child, parent or other next of kin who became seriously ill or hurt in the line of duty. It's not clear, however, whether this leave will be granted on a one-time basis. The Department of Labor is currently hammering out the fine print of the expanded law. To date, 26,000 service members have been injured in Iraq, and another 2,000 in Afghanistan.
The second change in the law allows workers to use FMLA leave for "any qualifying exigency" related to a soldier's call-up to active duty or deployment. Again, the details are being worked out, but this could mean time off to attend a "family readiness" seminar or military ceremony, to arrange child care, or to spend time with a returning soldier or one on home leave.
Such time off is often crucial to the welfare of military families, says Shelley MacDermid, director of Purdue University's Military Family Research Institute. Many wounded soldiers must travel for medical appointments, and naturally need a family member alongside. Sometimes, returning military members get a week or more home leave, yet their spouse has to return to work in a day.
"It's a big job to reconstruct your family after a deployment," says MacDermid. "If the family can't be together during that time and doesn't have flexibility in their schedules . . . it's not good for the kids, for the marriage, and for the health of the service member."
Soon after Andy Sapp came home from Iraq, he returned to his job as a high school English teacher but began to struggle with anxiety and insomnia. He's now doing well in treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, yet there have been times when he has had to stay home alone while his wife went to work, "wondering if he was okay," says Anne Sapp, a special education tutor in the Concord schools. The Billerica couple have three children, ages 11, 20, and 24.
"The point is flexibility," says MacDermid, "to have a little bit of options."
Still, workplace flexibility today is often in the eye of the beholder. To help smooth the friction that sometimes has arisen between workers and employers over FMLA, the Department of Labor also issued proposed changes to the original regulations.
For instance, Labor declined to narrow its half-dozen definitions of a "serious health condition," as many business groups had urged, yet officials are proposing to slightly tighten some workers' ability to take leaves. Under the proposed changes, employees with chronic serious illnesses, such as asthma, now will have to visit a doctor at least twice annually to remain eligible for leave.
As well, the government is trying to curb abuses of the FMLA's "two-day notice rule," says Victoria Lipnic, assistant labor secretary for employment standards. Currently, workers who need leave for unforeseen reasons, such as illness, need not notify their boss until they've been out for two days. A proposed new rule mandates that, except in emergencies, they must follow their employer's rules on absence notification, that is, usually call in before their shift begins.
"We're trying to get the default rule back to where employees have to notify employers ahead of time," says Lipnic.
Have a comment or suggestion on these changes to our national leave policy? Until April 11, the Department of Labor will accept public comment on the new military benefits, and the proposed changes in the original regulations. Go to regulations.gov to voice your opinion.
Maggie Jackson, author of What's Happening to Home: Balancing Work, Life and Refuge in the Information Age, can be reached at maggie.jackson@att.net.
