Jeff Nowak

Jeff Nowak is a shareholder at Littler Mendelson P.C., the world’s largest employment and labor law practice representing management.  Jeff has decades of experience advising and litigating on behalf of employers on a wide range of complex employment law matters so they can run the most profitable business and efficient operations without being side-tracked by discrimination claims, strikes or other workplace issues.

Website: https://www.littler.com/people/jeff-nowak
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Latest from Jeff Nowak - Page 2

Happy belated Father’s Day to all the dads and father-figures out there!

On Father’s Day every year, dads in my church are invited to give the Father’s Day homily at Sunday Mass. This past weekend, I volunteered to offer the Father’s Day reflection.

In a little league baseball-themed Father’s Day homily, I focused my reflection on the “rules.” As fathers, setting out the rules for our children seems our natural instinct: to bring order to the house, to lay the foundation for a good life, and perhaps like our fathers before us, to set discipline in order to succeed.
Continue Reading The FMLA Rules Are Important, But Don’t Let Them Stand in the Way of an Employee in Need

Welcome to the two people willing to dive into this blog post after reading that riveting headline!

In a highly technical opinion letter issued this week, the Department of Labor clarified how to calculate FMLA leave usage when an employee takes intermittent leave during a holiday week.

Bear with me here, but I find the best way to digest this opinion letter is to apply it to a real-life scenario. Let’s assume our employee, Johnny, took FMLA leave during the same week as Memorial Day. There are two possible scenarios:

In Scenario #1, Johnny is given Memorial Day off as a…
Continue Reading DOL Opinion Letter Sheds Light on Calculating FMLA Leave During a Holiday Week

In the dark of night, those crazy kids over at the U.S. Department of Labor were busy at work publishing new FMLA regulations, FMLA opinion letters, a new FMLA poster.

BREAKING NEWS: The USDOL publishes a new FMLA poster!

Let me beat you to it: Be still my beating heart!

What’s the posting requirement?

As we know, covered employers under the FMLA have a general posting requirement, which requires them to post an FMLA poster in conspicuous locations where employees are employed and where it can be readily seen by employees and applicants for employment.

FMLA-covered employers must post the…
Continue Reading DOL Publishes a New (Eggplant-Colored) FMLA Poster

Just over a week ago, Christians around the world commemorated Good Friday. We know the story well: three days later, the tears of Good Friday were wiped away on Easter.

For those of us who have lost a loved one, we can relate to the story of Good Friday: Sadness, despair, hopelessness, darkness. For us, however, the overwhelming grief of our own Good Friday doesn’t end in three days.

It takes much longer.

Months, years.

Sometimes, never.

How Can an Employer Help an Employee Grieving the Loss of a Loved One?

Employers have a critical role to play when an…
Continue Reading When an Employee Has Lost a Loved One, What Should Employers Do to Help?

Grab a Guinness and let’s celebrate – the ABA’s summary of 2022 FMLA decisions has arrived!

Every spring, the ABA’s Federal Labor Standards Legislation Committee publishes a comprehensive report of FMLA decisions handed down by the federal courts in the previous year. Although our little FMLA blog catches some of the key FMLA cases as they occur throughout the year, the ABA’s annual report includes every FMLA decision issued in 2022.

Every. Single. One. Of. Them.

This year’s report was just released and can be accessed here (pdf). I highly recommend it as a valuable FMLA resource for…
Continue Reading You Don’t Have to Be Irish to Enjoy This March Treat: The ABA’s Summary of 2022 FMLA Court Decisions Has Arrived!

Every one of us in the HR/employment world has met this moment. Your employee, Tommy, hands you a doctor’s note – usually no more than one sentence long – stating simply:
Tommy’s pinky toe hurts. Based on my medical judgment, Tommy cannot work more than 8 hours in a day or 40 hours per week. No overtime advised.
It’s a doctor’s note that causes HR directors everywhere to wince.

So, what’s the impact of this doctor’s note? Can an employee use a “NO OVERTIME” doctor’s note to take FMLA leave whenever he’s assigned overtime? Or can we rely on the…
Continue Reading Is an Employer Required to Provide FMLA Leave Indefinitely to an Employee Who Cannot Work Overtime?

Happy 30th birthday, you wonderful old FMLA! 

Break out the band aids and ace bandages! It’s time to celebrate a special birthday for our favorite federal statute.

All weekend, I’ve been singing Harry Styles’ song “As It Was” to the Nowak kids:

You know it’s not the same without medical leaveIn this world, it’s just FMLA. . .

And as predictable as my god-awful FMLA songs are, we even broke out the 30th birthday cake last night in honor of the FMLA.

Where Have We Been, Where are We Going?

In all seriousness, as our world comes out of a…
Continue Reading Happy 30th Birthday, FMLA! Where Do We Go from Here?

File this in your “Sometimes, People are Really Awful” folder.

The story is a very simple one.

An associate working at a Cleveland law firm – we’ll call her Sue to protect the innocent – returned from maternity leave.

Should have been a relatively happy time, yes? Hugs all around, maybe even some donuts, but at least a kind word and a thoughtful check in with Sue on how parenthood was going, right?

Not this story.

A few days after her return, Sue informed the firm’s brass that she would be resigning to work elsewhere.

In response, she got a…
Continue Reading When an Employee Returns from FMLA Leave, Don’t Be This Employer

We’ve reached the end of yet another year. I hope it was wildly successful for your organization.

Are you ready to pay out year-end bonuses?

Or perhaps instead you want to offer a pay incentive to employees to improve attendance or production?  Take, for instance, a point-based attendance bonus policy in which employees are assessed points for every tardiness or absence (even for FMLA or ADA-covered leave), which, in turn, disqualifies an employee from receiving the incentive.

In these situations, can an employer disqualify an employee from the bonus or incentive?

In short, Yes.

Under trusty Section 215 of the FMLA regulations…
Continue Reading It’s the End of the Year. May an Employer Legally Deny a Bonus to an Employee After Taking FMLA Leave?

This February, the Family and Medical Leave Act turns 30, and I am throwing a THREE-day party to celebrate!
A party where you and I spend NINE hours together over THREE straight days discussing nothing but the F-M-L-A.
In this interactive training course, I will help you master the critical components of the FMLA, and dare we say, the content might even get you a wee bit excited about administering the FMLA.
You read that correctly: Get ready to be FMLA-energized!
Using case studies (and perhaps a bit of humor), I will help you master the FMLA from beginning to end!  I…
Continue Reading As the FMLA Turns 30, Join Me for a Three-Day Party to Celebrate: An FMLA Master Class (2023 edition)

One of the best parts of my job is the chance to talk shop with other employment attorneys who, like me, work in the trenches with employers to help them comply with the FMLA and ADA.
So, when my friend Eric Meyer reached out to me to join him last Friday to share some practical advice to employers in navigating the rough waters of the FMLA and ADA, I was intrigued.  Add to the discussion another friend, Daris Freeman (AVP and counsel at Unum), and I couldn’t pass it up.
Listen to any or all of our zoom discussion…
Continue Reading Need a Few Hacks and Cheat Codes to Survive the FMLA and ADA? Click Here

Yeah, I get it. He’s taller than me. Significantly taller.
Ever since my son, Luke, was a wee lad, we dreamed of going on a major league baseball road trip together.
Baseball runs through our veins, so after years of dreaming, 2022 was our year.  Since the beginning of this year, we’ve been plotting, planning and scheduling the trip of a lifetime.
Just a few weeks ago, Luke and I made our way from Chicago to the east coast to catch major league baseball games at six different stadiums – Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston, New York (Mets and Yankees).  Then,…
Continue Reading What Does a Baseball Road Trip Teach Us About Bugging an Employee While They Take FMLA Leave?

In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, the FMLA questions are coming fast and furious: Can an employee take FMLA leave to obtain and recover from an abortion? What if the abortion is elective? And now that abortion will be illegal in at least some states, is travel to another state to obtain an abortion covered by FMLA?

Oddly enough, the Department of Labor has never provided meaningful guidance on these specific questions. Nevertheless, it seems apparent that the FMLA covers abortion and travel to obtain an abortion.

Let me explain.

Is abortion covered by the FMLA?
Continue Reading Does the FMLA Cover Abortion and Travel to Obtain an Abortion?

Can an employer violate the FMLA even though it never denies an employee’s request for FMLA leave?
Ask Salvatore Ziccarelli, who we’ll call Sal for short. Sal worked for the Sheriff as a corrections officer in my backyard, Cook County, Illinois.
Over the course of 27 years working for the Sheriff, Sal developed a number of health conditions, including work-related post-traumatic stress disorder. Sal took quite a bit of FMLA leave over time, and as of September 2016, he already had used more than two-thirds of the 12 weeks he was allotted for FMLA. So, when he lined up to…
Continue Reading Employers: Warn Your Employers to Stop Saying Stupid Stuff in Response to an Employee’s Request for FMLA Leave!

The client calls are a regular part of my everyday, increasingly so during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Stress. Anxiety. Depression.
The causes are as numerous as the stars in the sky.
Simply put, a growing number of our employees are dealing with serious mental health issues that render them unable to come to work. It’s our new reality, and as employers, we need to know how to manage and support our employee during these difficult times.
Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Labor issued guidance reminding us that the FMLA covers situations when an employee’s mental health condition inhibits them from working.
The…
Continue Reading A Key to FMLA Success: Supporting our Employees as Mental Health Issues Arise

Luke and White Sox closer, Liam Hendriks
I love baseball.

I love the sport so much that, in the Nowak family, we are taught that America’s favorite pastime was formed in the story of Creation somewhere between the placement of the stars and Adam’s rib.

As a lifelong Chicagoan, I long for spring as a survival tactic after a long winter.

And with spring comes spring training.  Last week, I enjoyed a little slice of baseball heaven, as our family traveled to Arizona, in part, to catch a few days of spring training. The crack of the bat, the pop…
Continue Reading What Can Baseball Teach Us about the FMLA?