(a) Generally, a worksite can refer to either a single location or
a group of contiguous locations. Structures which form a campus or
industrial park, or separate facilities in proximity with one another,
may be considered a single site of employment. On the other hand, there
may be several single sites of employment within a single building,
such as an office building, if separate employers conduct activities
within the building. For example, an office building with 50 different
businesses as tenants will contain 50 sites of employment. The offices
of each employer will be considered separate sites of employment for
purposes of FMLA. An employee's worksite under FMLA will ordinarily be
the site the employee reports to or, if none, from which the employee's
work is assigned.
(1) Separate buildings or areas which are not directly connected or
in immediate proximity are a single worksite if they are in reasonable
geographic proximity, are used for the same purpose, and share the same
staff and equipment. For example, if an employer manages a number of
warehouses in a metropolitan area but regularly shifts or rotates the
same employees from one building to another, the multiple warehouses
would be a single worksite.
(2) For employees with no fixed worksite, e.g., construction
workers, transportation workers (e.g., truck drivers, seamen, pilots),
salespersons, etc., the ``worksite'' is the site to which they are
assigned as their home base, from which their work is assigned, or to
which they report. For example, if a construction company headquartered
in New Jersey opened a construction site in Ohio, and set up a mobile
trailer on the construction site as the company's on-site office, the
construction site in Ohio would be the worksite for any employees hired
locally who report to the mobile trailer/company office daily for work
assignments, etc. If that construction company also sent personnel such
as job superintendents, foremen, engineers, an office manager, etc.,
from New Jersey to the job site in Ohio, those workers sent from New
Jersey continue to have the headquarters in New Jersey as their
``worksite.'' The workers who have New Jersey as their worksite would
not be counted in determining eligibility of employees whose home base
is the Ohio worksite, but would be counted in determining eligibility
of employees whose home base is New Jersey. For transportation
employees, their worksite is the terminal to which they are assigned,
report for work, depart, and return after completion of a work
assignment. For example, an airline pilot may work for an airline with
headquarters in New York, but the pilot regularly reports for duty and
originates or begins flights from the company's facilities located in
an airport in Chicago and returns to Chicago at the completion of one
or more flights to go off duty. The pilot's worksite is the facility in
Chicago. An employee's personal residence is not a worksite in the case
of employees, such as salespersons, who travel a sales territory and
who generally leave to work and return from work to their personal
residence, or employees who work at home, as under the concept of
flexiplace or telecommuting. Rather, their worksite is the office
to which they report and from which assignments are made.
(3) For purposes of determining that employee's eligibility, when
an employee is jointly employed by two or more employers (see Sec.
825.106), the employee's worksite is the primary employer's office from
which the employee is assigned or reports, unless the employee has
physically worked for at least one year at a facility of a secondary
employer, in which case the employee's worksite is that location. The
employee is also counted by the secondary employer to determine
eligibility for the secondary employer's full-time or permanent
employees.
(b) The 75-mile distance is measured by surface miles, using
surface transportation over public streets, roads, highways and
waterways, by the shortest route from the facility where the employee
needing leave is employed. Absent available surface transportation
between worksites, the distance is measured by using the most
frequently utilized mode of transportation (e.g., airline miles).
(c) The determination of how many employees are employed within 75
miles of the worksite of an employee is based on the number of
employees maintained on the payroll. Employees of educational
institutions who are employed permanently or who are under contract are
``maintained on the payroll'' during any portion of the year when
school is not in session. See Sec. 825.105(c).
[60 FR 2237, Jan. 6, 1995; 60 FR 16383, Mar. 30, 1995; 73 FR 68078, Nov. 17, 2008]
