THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Tuesday, August 9, 1994                TAG: 9408090014
SECTION: FRONT                    PAGE: A14  EDITION: FINAL 
TYPE: Editorial 
                                             LENGTH: Short :   47 lines

ONE SIZE DOESN'T FIT ALL FAMILY-ACT HORRORS

When Congress was debating the Family and Medical Leave Act, opponents pointed out that the act would be largely superfluous for many employees, since many employers were already working out leave arrangements with workers who needed them. President Clinton turned a deaf ear, however, and signed into law the bill giving workers 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a new child or a sick relative.

The one-size-fits-all policy, however, is turning out to have unexpectedly nasty consequences in the real world. The Family and Medical Leave Act might thus serve as a cautionary tale for the unfolding health-care debate.

As reported by Deborah Gordon in The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star, some employees at local firms have found themselves terminated when they sought to extend their leaves beyond the allotted 12 weeks. They are angry because workers who had taken leaves longer than 12 weeks before the law was passed did not lose their jobs.

Corporate America has for years been seeking to accommodate itself to the changes in the work force. Increasingly sensitive to the needs of working women or employees with aging parents, they worked out their own arrangements that suited their own needs as well as that of the employee. So for most, the law really hasn't meant a huge change.

``As far as I can tell,'' says Raymond L. Higert, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis who has studied the effects of the law, ``it hasn't made that big a difference to the companies or the people using it.''

For some, though, it has meant a change - a negative one. With a law now on the books, some employers feel no obligation to offer anything more than the law requires. So employers who once had more generous policies no longer feature them.

The Family and Medical Leave Act was pushed through on the basis of a few hard cases of people who worked for employers who wouldn't accommodate their difficulties. That should illustrate the hazards of making policy by sob story, such as the Clinton White House is now doing with health care.

KEYWORDS: FAMILY AND MEDICAL LEAVE ACT

by CNB