Extend Family and Medical Leave
Recently, Senator Hillary Clinton unveiled her proposal to help parents balance work and family though an expansion of the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) to cover an additional 13 million workers and guarantee at least 7 paid sick days per year for every worker.
15 years ago, naysayers argue that family and medical leave would place the entire U.S. economy at a competitive disadvantage. Most employers, however, found that the original Family and Medical Leave law passed in 1993 has turned out to be a pro-business policy. A Families and Work Institute study conducted five years after the federal law went into effect found that 84 percent of employers concluded that the benefits of providing family and medical leave offset or outweighed the costs. In fact, many businesses noted reduced employee turnover, enhanced productivity, and improved morale.
Senator Clinton’s proposals include many of the same ideas outlined in two recent papers published by the DLC and PPI - Michele Stockwell’s Flexible Work for Strong Families and my Helping Mothers Succeed. Clinton’s agenda calls for expanding the FMLA to cover employers with 25 workers (the current law covers employers with 50 or more workers); making the federal government a paid family leave model; guaranteeing all workers access to sick days; empowering workers to request workplace flexibility like changing their hours or telecommuting; improving access to high quality child care by, among other things, promoting quality rating systems currently in place in several states; and giving every parent a real choice about whether to stay home and care for their children full time or work outside the home.
One of the key provisions in Senator Clinton’s agenda is her proposal for a State Family Leave Innovation Fund, which would commit $1 billion to support state level parental leave programs through competitive matching grants to help cover start-up costs and program expenditures. The fund will not dictate what approach each state would take, but will support various approaches to providing leave.
States have begun experimenting with a variety of approaches to expand on the FMLA. In fact, two states - California and Washington - have already passed paid family leave laws. But state efforts need to be expanded to help improve leave for working families, and Clinton’s proposed fund will help jump start the innovation in the states. As states begin experimenting, they would be wise to look at states like California and Washington as models for progress.
In 2002, then-California Gov. Gray Davis and the state legislature took into account both the high costs workers face to support a family and the market competition that business owners face and crafted an employee-financed family leave system. This pro-family, pro-business law established the Family Temporary Disability Insurance (FTDI) system, which uses the state’s current disability insurance system to expand paid coverage to workers, most of whom will receive about 55 percent of their salary for six weeks of leave. Overall, paid family and medical leave has enhanced the quality of family and work life for all Californians.
This year, Washington became the second state to enact paid family leave legislation. This new insurance program is slated to begin in October 2009 and will offer new parents up to 5 weeks of leave time per year. Individuals who work 35 hours per week or more will receive a weekly benefit of $250 during their leave time. Those who work less will receive a prorated benefit.
While California and Washington have taken the most significant strides on family and medical leave, several other states have passed key provisions that states should consider. Minnesota’s Family and Medical Leave law allows an employee to use their personal sick leave benefits to attend to a child for a reasonable amount of time. In addition, Minnesota requires all public employers and private employers with 21 or more employees to grant an employee leave of up to a total of 16 hours each year to attend school conferences or school-related activities of their children. Both of these provisions give parents the ability to balance two critical roles in their lives and succeed as both parents and employees.
Some states have decided to target their family leave policy to the critical first year of a child’s life. At least three states (Minnesota, Montana, and New Mexico) have experimented with At-Home Infant Care (AHIC) programs provide partial wage replacement to low-income, working parents who choose to have one parent stay home for the first year of a child’s life. These programs are typically limited to employed parents and have time limits, generally between 12 and 24 months during the lifetime of the recipient.
As policymakers in many other states consider similar legislation, they would be wise to analyze California’s fair and fiscally responsible model for providing workers the tools they need to excel as workers and family caregivers. And Senator Clinton’s proposal for a State Family Leave Innovation Fund will assist states in making important progress in this area.