Marking the 20th anniversary of the Family and Medical Leave
Act, about a year ago the U.S. Department of Labor trumpeted a
survey concluding that the law "continues to make a positive
impact on the lives of workers without imposing an undue burden on
employers." According to the DOL, 85 percent of employers
reported that FMLA compliance was easy or had no noticeable effect
on their administrative processes — fewer than two percent of
employees taking intermittent leave were off work for a day or less
and, perhaps most striking, less than three percent of covered
worksites reported they suspected FMLA abuse.
A year later, those statistics still seem to fly in the face of
reality, particularly from the perspective of the very people who
are responsible for ensuring that employers are in compliance. For
example, before military leave provisions were even added or the
DOL issued several hundred more pages of "clarifying"
regulations addressing the existing law, human
