I was injured on the job, I had surgery on both hands and I'm in therapy. My HR manager told me just today all the time from January till now would be counted against my FMLA. How can this be? No one ever said that this would effect my FMLA time until now. I work for Tyson Poultry, Broken Bow, Oklahoma. During this time I have drawed on my workman,s comp.

There is nothing illegal about having FMLA and workers comp run concurrently. If your condition, your employer and you all qualify for FMLA, your employer is required by law to apply FMLA whether you request it or not. It is immaterial whether it was a workers comp case or not.

While this is not the ideal way of handling things, there is a legal precedent behind what your employer is doing, and it is a US Supreme Court decision. In Ragsdale v. Wolverine, the Supremes established that while it is preferable in the extreme that the employee be notified in advance, as long as the non-notification does not result in the employee receiving less time than they otherwise would have, the fact that notification was not received in advance does not entitle the employee to additional time.

In your case, as with the plantiff in the case above, you have already been on leave for FAR longer than the law requires. Thus since the retroactive notification of FMLA does not result in your receiving less time than the law requires and since you have not been harmed by the failure to notify, your employer is legal.

Ditto. If it qualifies, it counts as FMLA. WC has no effect on whether it can be FMLA or not.