“We are absolutely delighted that the U.S. House of Representatives voted last night by  an overwhelming margin of 402  to 9 to adopt a technical correction to the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) that would, for the first time, ensure that flight attendants and other airlines employees can take the unpaid leave the law provides.  Fifteen years after the FMLA was enacted, this measure is long overdue.

As the FMLA is currently written, it is extremely 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. 2744, would close that loophole which has excluded too many air crew workers from FMLA protections for too long. 

We join with our partners at the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA in celebrating this victory, and urge the Senate to waste no time in adopting its version of the measure, S. 2059.  Making this technical correction is essential to ensuring that this law works the way Congress intended.”