First of all, I'd like to comment that this is one of the most usefull websites on the net!

I am an employer with 55 employees in CA. I have an employee that was off 12 weeks for a miscarriage 6 months ago, now she is submitting a doctors note for another 10 weeks off due to another misciarrage. This employee has also missed about 20 days during the year, claiming pregnancy issues. The other 2 employees in the department are ready to quit as they feel they carry all the work load, is it within the companies right to deny the new 10 week leave and replace this employee?

first, how do you calculate fmla leave? calendar year? she is entitled to four months of pregnancy disability leave. you cant fire her for taking a protected leave. if she has exhausted her pdl that is one thing.

We do not have a policy as this has never occurred. We do base all other policies off of hire date. So this would be 22 weeks within her annual time. I don't want to fire her, but I have to hire another person as 2 people cannot handle the work load as our busy season is coming up. Can we offer her a different position when she comes back? Do we have to continue all benefits?

Do you have any policy pertaining to other types of short term disability? So, you've never had any employee that has taken FMLA or CFRA before?

If all of this time off is within her one year (however that is defined), and she takes the 10 weeks, she will have exhausted her pdl and must be treated the same as any other employee on std (CFRA does not count pregnancy related conditions as qualifying so she is not eligible for CFRA in this case, even assuming she's eligible in any case). In your original post you said you wanted to deny the 10 weeks and replace her, so I assumed that meant you wanted to fire her.

Just to clarify, she has 4 weeks remaining of pdl that she is entitled to and that you cannot deny. Anything beyond that, she is treated as other temporarily disabled employees.

PDL actually does not require continuation of health insurance, however, if PDL runs concurrently with FMLA, you have to provide benefits for up to 12 weeks during any FMLA leave. You are only obligated to hold insurance for a maximum of 12 weeks.

Yes we have had employees take FMLA...never 1 employee requesting 2 12 week leaves in a single 12 month period.

so my question is how do you calculate the 12 month period for fmla leave? is it based on the calendar year? you should use the same method for pdl. So if you use the calendar year she is actually now entitled to another four months pdl. I would also revise my earlier reply to account for the 20 other days she missed.