I am an executive with a large electronics manufacturing company. I went on FMLA in late August of this year and followed all of the rules provided to me by my company. It is interesting to note that they have no personnel manual and all of the information I was able to get about options I had to dig up myself through contacting various individuals. 84 days into the 90 day period, I notified the company that I was released to return to work. They advised me not to return until they had evaluated the situation. The next day, I received a Fed-Ex letter telling me that my position had been eliminated and that I was out of a job.

Do I have any recourse here? Has the company broken any rules that I can take advantage of?

First of all, I don't know what 90 days you're talking about. FMLA is for a total of 12 weeks. Even if you count 7 day weeks (and the hourly requirement for FMLA is 480, which is 5 day weeks) that would be a maximum of 84 days. It would be 60 WORK days. But even using the most extreme definition, you were not still inside the FMLA period. 84 days would be either the absolute last day or quite a bit after it expired, depending on which way you're counting it.

The FMLA statute protects you from being fired for taking FMLA, and for excessive absences while you still have FMLA protection. It does not protect you from actions that would have taken place regardless of whether you took your leave. If your position would have been eliminated anyway, it's quite legal.

What this boils down to is that we don't have enough information to say if this is legal or not. If your 12 weeks had expired, it's legal. If your position would have been eliminated regardless of your leave, it's legal. If they only eliminated your position to punish you for taking FMLA, it's illegal. We have no way, from the information you've provided, to say what happened here.