It’s midnight, you’re walking in Manhattan. You hear a scream and see a woman on the ground, with a man holding a gun to her head. You dial 911 on your cell phone. There is no answer.

One reason could be that one-third of all 911 call center technicians, who work for the New York Police Department, are pre-approved for unpaid absence under the Family and Medical Leave Act, which allows them not to show up for work — and not call in to the NYPD until two days later.

Or, if your Staten Island bus doesn’t arrive, and you’re late to work or school, it could be because Staten Island has the highest percentage of bus operators certified for FMLA leave in New York City. In other words, the Family and Medical Leave Act is being abused, sometimes to the detriment of the public. To reduce abuse, the U.S. Department of Labor has just proposed new rules, with a 60-day public comment period.

But Senator Clinton, who has proposed legislation to expand FMLA, issued a statement saying that “the Bush Administration has acted once again to tilt the balance of power towards corporations instead of hardworking Americans.” Mrs. Clinton wants to expand the number of eligible workers and move towards paid leave.

What is FMLA? Why does it create such havoc in some workplaces? The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 entitles employees of firms with at least 50 workers to 12 weeks of unpaid leave a year for the birth or adoption of a child, to cover an employee’s sickness, or to take care of close relatives with serious health conditions. Between six and 13 million workers a year take FMLA.

The family part of the law works, but the medical part is sometimes abused, with some employees faking chronic illnesses for themselves or relatives, and leaving their coworkers to cover for them.

It now takes just one certificate a year from a doctor saying that an employee — or a relative — has a chronic condition, such as back pain or asthma. This certificate entitles the employee to unscheduled, intermittent leave in increments ranging from a few minutes many times to the entire 12 weeks all at once.

Under current Labor Department regulations, employers have to be notified only two days afterward if employees have taken FMLA-covered leave. How can employers manage their workplaces if they don’t know who will show up? If a bus driver comes in late, his bus may be still in the yard, with service on the route reduced.

Not requiring timely notification might have made sense in 1993 when only 5% of Americans had cell phones. But now, when 85% of the entire population, babies included, have them, it’s no hardship to call in sick. The Labor Department proposes that those taking FMLA leave should have to follow individual workplace rules to call in absences — unless it is a true emergency and the worker cannot get to a phone.

Currently, the employer has no grounds to give a negative performance rating to employees who abuse FMLA. Under the proposed regulations, employers could deny a perfect attendance award to an employee who uses FMLA to come in habitually late, as long as it treats all workers the same.

A difficult question is how employers can distinguish between those who are truly sick from those who are not. Some employees may not want employers to know exactly why they’re out, but the entire FMLA law is conditioned on lack of privacy. FMLA was passed before the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, which set standards for protecting health information. Yet HIPAA does not prevent employers for requiring medical certification for non-FMLA sick leave.

The problem is that if the Federal government gives a 12-week entitlement of job-protected leave, there must be some way of checking the validity of the claims.

The Labor Department proposals try to reduce abuse by authorizing employers to ask for medical certification every six months rather than once a year. If the certificate is not clear, and the employee doesn’t respond to requests for clarification, the employer can contact the worker’s doctor.

Under the new proposals, workers who have been sick can return to light-duty work without the reduced duties counting as FMLA leave, as is true now. However, employees who work in safety-sensitive positions, such as driving buses or large trucks or operating heavy machinery, would be recertified when they return, to protect the public and their coworkers.

The executive assistant general counsel of the New York City Transit Authority, Florence Dean, wrote last year: ” … the less grave the illness, the more likely that taking time off can be manipulated for purposes wholly at odds with the Act. Under those circumstances, requirements to supply proof would greatly address the fraudulent use of the leave, while not impairing at all the ability of employees to take their statutory leave, as Congress intended.”

The Labor Department has been listening.

Ms. Furchtgott-Roth, former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. She can be reached at dfr@hudson.org.