United Subtly Threatens Flight Attendants Who Request Medical Leave

United Airlines seems to be cracking down on employees who are requesting (federally protected) medical leave. There’s no doubt some abuse with this, but I can’t help but feel like this message is about intimidation, more than anything else.

United may use medical leave information against employees

Recently, JonNYC reported how United is starting to delay and even reject medical leave requests from crew members, particularly flight attendants. The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) mandates the kind of leave that companies are required to provide, but of course there’s always some level of abuse, that companies are looking to minimize.

Along those lines, JonNYC reports on the latest method United is apparently using to make employees think twice about using this feature. After submitting an FMLA request, flight attendants receive the following message:

Please submit substantial medical facts to support how your condition incapacitates you on an unforeseeable/intermittent basis for up to 4 times per month/up to 3 days which is a total of 12 days per month. This information is not only required to determine approval of your FML request but also to determine if you are fit to work as a Flight Attendant.

That last part is the most interesting. As you can see, medical information won’t just be used to determine if a medical leave request can be approved, but also to determine whether someone is fit to continue working as a flight attendant.

I’m curious what comes of this development

Obviously the concept of medical leave is a touchy subject for major companies, especially airlines. Not only are some rights federally protected, but frontline employees are also unionized, so they have contracts that clearly spell out what they’re entitled to.

Of course it’s important that employees get access to FMLA without intimidation. At the same time, it seems like abuse of FMLA is a big problem in the airline industry. For example, just recently I wrote about how United spied on a flight attendant who was on medical leave, and then fired him, after deciding he was abusing the policy.

While a bit different from an FMLA request, it’s worth noting that in 2024, United tried to update its sick policy, requiring that flight attendants “provide verification of an incapacitating illness from an accredited physician when making a sick call.” Previously they could just self-report.

This came at a time where United claimed it saw a significant increase in sick calls over weekends in summer, suggesting people are misusing the company’s sick leave policy. As you might expect, this ended up causing quite a conflict between management and the union.

Bottom line

United is trying to crack down on employees abusing the company’s medical leave policy. As part of this, the company is now warning flight attendants that the information they submit as part of their medical leave request could also be used to determine if they are fit to work as a flight attendant. I can’t imagine all that much will actually come of this, though it’ll be interesting to see how the flight attendant union responds.

What do you make of United’s medical leave policy updates?