How is the amount of available FMLA leave calculated for a part-time employee taking leave for a serious health condition?

When a part-time employee takes Family and Medical Act (FMLA) leave in a single block of time, he or she is entitled to 12 workweeks of leave regardless of the number of hours typically worked in the workweek. However, when an employee takes leave on an intermittent or reduced leave schedule, only the amount of leave actually taken may be counted toward the employee’s FMLA leave entitlement, as outlined in FMLA regulation §825.205.

The FMLA regulations use the example of an employee who typically works 30 hours a week but only works 20 hours a week on a FMLA reduced leave schedule. This employee would use 10 hours of leave each week, or the equivalent of one-third of a week of FMLA leave. The regulations also indicate that an employer may convert the fractions to an hourly equivalent as long as the conversion equitably reflects the employee’s total normally scheduled hours. In the above example, 30 hours per week times 12 weeks is a total of 360 hours available in a 12-month period. Therefore, the employer could deduct 10 hours of FMLA leave from the 360 hours for each workweek the employee uses FMLA leave on the reduced leave schedule. See, the FMLA absence tracking calendar.

If an employee’s schedule varies from week to week to such an extent that an employer is unable to determine with any certainty how many hours the employee would otherwise have worked (but for the taking of FMLA leave), a weekly average of the hours scheduled over the 12 months prior to the beginning of the leave period (including any hours for which the employee took leave of any type) would be used for calculating the employee’s leave entitlement.

FMLA eligibility is also contingent on the employee’s working at least 1,250 hours in the immediate preceding 12 months, and many part-time employees will not meet this threshold for eligibility.