FMLA and denied advancement

[gfed123]

I am a federal employee with a technical job. Much of what I am evaluated on is technical achievements.

In 2008, I took 12 weeks of FMLA, in addition to 8 weeks sick leave to care for a new baby. I recieved a score of 3.15 on a scale of 5 for my evaluation in 2008. This was almost a point lower than my evaluation for 2007, which was 4.10. I was told by my manager that I do good work but that I just wasn't present for enough of the year to have built up enough achievements to be competitive with my peers. As a result, I was not promoted.

This has always bothered me. Was this a violation of FMLA?

 

[Patricia_Young]

12 weeks of FMLA is all that FMLA is. If you actually took 20 weeks off, those additional 8 weeks could very well have been what brought your scores down. Even so, this happened over a year ago?

 

[Green_Hornet]

FMLA no, but it could be a violation of the Equal Pay Act. I would run it by an attorney.

 

[mightymoose]

It actually sounds reasonable to me. You didn't receive negative ratings... just not ratings as high as you would like.
If you are not present to do the work, how can you be rated on it fairly against your peers? How would they feel about someone that was gone for five months being promoted over them when they did all the work?
If the employer was basing the rating on work actually performed then it seems very fair to me. I don't know the meaning of the numbers on the scale, but I would think that the rating you got is actually average- not a negative rating.

 

[Patricia_Young]

The FMLA leave cannot be counted against the employee. But the additional leave over and above that may be counted.

 

[mightymoose]

Well that is just the thing- the employer did not necessarily rate him lower just for having taken leave..... the employer reasoned that he could not rate him higher because he was not present and there was nothing to rate (or at least very little in comparison to other employees who were actually present).