Eligibility & Rights to Avail Bereavement Leave in New Jersey
Bereavement leave or funeral leave is defined as a leave taken in order to grieve and manage the issues pertaining to the death of an immediate family member. In recognition of the rights of employees to grieve without having to worry about losing their job security drafts are drawn by states or by the federal government.President Bill Clinton was the first to realize the need to provide employees with the right to grieve and hence signed the Family and Medical Leave Act on August 5, 1993. According to this act, larger employees are required to provide their employees with at least an unpaid leave for health and bereavement reasons.
Bereavement Leave New Jersey Eligibility criteria for this law demand that the employee is a part of a business with at minimum 50 or more employees who work within a 75-mile radius of the workplace.
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The bereaved employee must have worked for a minimum of 12 months in his organization with 1250 hours of work in the last working year. Under FMLA the employee who takes their leave is to be returned to the same position that they left by their employers. If that position is not available the employer must provide the employee with a position with the same benefits, pay, and responsibility.
The FMLA covers both the employees in the private and public sector, in legal clauses the employees in the public sector are referred to as state officers. Bereavement Leave New Jersey adheres to the outline of FMLA, however, employs its own family and medical leave law, which allows employees to take up to 12 weeks leave in any portion of a 24 month period.
Similar to the FMLA the employees are required to have worked for at least 12 months however unlike the FMLA employees are eligible for the leave if they have worked for 1000 hours in the past year.
While New Jersey’s Family and Medical law adhere to many clauses of the FMLA for leave including caring for a sick spouse, parent-in-law or child, there is no law that requires private employers in New Jersey to provide employees with paid or unpaid leave in the case of sickness or bereavement.
Even though there is no requirement, a number of companies to provide their employees with bereavement leave. Multiple cities and town in New Jersey are also known to have passed local ordinances that require employers to provide employees with paid bereavement leave.
Since there is no mainstream law, employers have varying policies which explain how much time will be allowed for a death in the family and which family members are covered. Generally, it is only the immediate family members that are covered.
In addition, to a reasonable period of Bereavement Leave New Jersey for the employee to make arrangements and grieve, employers may also offer grief management service via an employee assistance program. Again all of these are benefits that the employers provide and hence can be
extensive or limited as long as they maintain the rights of the employee.
