webmaster note: Our Locals Attorney Marty Hogan was one of the chief consultants for the Clinton Administration and was instrumental in the drafting of FMLA. 

FAMILY LEAVE UNDER ATTACK--The Bush administration's Department of Labor plans to issue new regulations revising the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), and Big Business groups are urging drastic rollbacks of the leave law. Since the law was enacted in 1993, more than 50 million workers have used the unpaid leave it provides to take care of newborn or newly adopted children, seriously ill family members or themselves. "It was a godsend," Patti Phillips of Atlanta told a Senate roundtable discussion June 23. Phillips used small portions of the allowed 12 weeks of leave to take her 12-year-old daughter, who was battling bone cancer, to chemotherapy sessions. "In the last two months of her life, I was able to be there 24-7," Phillips said. Witnesses from business groups said the law should be narrowed. But currently it covers only about 40 percent of the private-sector workforce. "Instead of scaling back worker protections in the FMLA, Congress should expand the FMLA to enable more workers to meet their families' needs without compromising income or job security," said AFL-CIO President Sweeney