“We are extremely pleased that the U.S. House of Representatives voted last night to adopt a technical correction to the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) that will, for the first time, ensure that flight attendants and other airline employees can take the unpaid leave the law provides.  Sixteen years after the FMLA was enacted, this is the right thing to do.

The FMLA is written in a way that makes it difficult for airline workers to meet the required minimum number of hours worked to be eligible to take leave, because of the unique way their hours are calculated.  The Airline Flight Crew Technical Corrections Act, H.R. 912, will close a loophole that has excluded many air crew workers from FMLA protections for too long. 

The National Partnership for Women & Families joins with our partners at the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA in celebrating this victory.  We also note that the House passed this measure last year as well, but it died because the Senate did not consider it.  This year, we need the Senate to move quickly to adopt its version of the measure.  Making this technical correction is essential to ensuring that this law works for airline employees the way Congress intended.”