Facing Termination for Medical Leave: Can My Employer Really Do This? Seeking Advice

I'm working in a BPO in Delhi/NCR. I'm a married family man. We have not been well for the past 3-4 days. I have provided medical papers, but my company is still threatening to terminate me. My manager is behaving cruelly and not understanding the problem. Please suggest, is it possible to terminate an employee for taking medical leaves? Whom should I approach in this case?

For eligibility for the Family and Medical Leave Act, your organization should have 50 employees; then you can avail of this benefit.

Secondly, you must have worked for the employer for at least 1,250 hours in the 12 months before you take leave.

Lastly, you must work at a location where the employer has at least 50 employees within 75 miles of your worksite. So, even if your employer has more than 50 employees, if they are spread out and there are not 50 employees within 75 miles of where you work, you will not be eligible to take FMLA leave.

FMLA leave is unpaid leave. If you are faced with a health condition that causes you to miss work, whether it is because of your own serious health condition or to care for a family member with a serious health condition, you may be able to take up to 12 weeks of job-protected time off under the FMLA.

Respected team, kindly help to find a way out of this—how can a manager threaten an employee with termination from their job if their performance is not poor and they have been working with loyalty for a long time.

Regards

I don't understand what source Aditya referred to in order to answer a question regarding the brutal threat of dismissal solely based on taking 3-4 days of unexpected medical leave. Let the questioner not attach too much importance to the aforementioned answer, which was provided in good faith and with excessive enthusiasm.

Understanding Theory X Management Style

Ravindra, you may have heard of Theory X, as propounded by Douglas McGregor, which suggests that most people need to be coerced, controlled, and threatened with punishment in order to make them work. This is why many managers tend to be highly authoritative and sometimes insensitive, even towards sincere employees, when their behavior deviates from expectations and resort to using threats. Such a negative management style involves keeping employees in constant fear of punishment.

Therefore, do not be afraid. Instead, try to work smartly to capture his attention. When he is in a good mood, express your regrets for inadvertently triggering his anger due to your unexpected and unavoidable absence, and he will calm down.

Understanding Leave Policies and Employee Rights

Generally, leaves are available for all kinds of employees/workers. As such, you cannot claim that leave is a right that you can avail of at any time. For management, sanctioning or denying leave is like tightrope walking. Establishments are supposed to have "leave reserves" to adjust and accommodate people who go on leave of one kind or another. Otherwise, if a person is on leave, their work should be shared by other colleagues, which can be an overburden to them. In any case, to that extent, production is tardy or a total loss.

On the other hand, "family health or health is a reason for leave for 3 or 4 days." Heavens are not going to fall if the establishment accommodates leave for a few days. That need not be considered a global issue. If they intend to deny leave, it may not be a single issue of leave alone. That might be a culmination of factors, which I do not want to elaborate on. Take up the issue with the concerned authorities for an amicable settlement. Nowadays, there are none to sort out the issue on behalf of the affected party.