Parent Not Counted with Sub for FMLA Coverage, Court Says

( Categories : FMLA )
Despite sharing a parent company’s employment policies, forms and payroll services, a subsidiary was not an integrated entity with its parent for the purposes of coverage under the Family and Medical Leave Act, the First Circuit ruled. A customer service representative terminated for absences related to her daughter’s care claimed that her company had the threshold 50 employees under FMLA if the parent corporation was included. There is a “strong presumption that a parent corporation is not the employer of its subsidiary’s employees,” the Court said, also ruling that parent and sub did not have common management, interrelation between operations, or centralized control of labor relations. Engelhardt v. S .P. Richards Co.