NY: Joining the Civilized World on Family Leave?
Good news for New York's working families: the Times reports that Governor Spitzer is building support for a paid family leave benefit:
Under the plan — which would make New York one of three states to provide paid family leave — workers could take up to 12 weeks per year off, with a maximum benefit of $170 a week.Mr. Spitzer’s plan would be more expansive than the paid leave in Washington State, which is limited to caring for newborns and newly adopted children, and in California, which covers workers caring for a seriously ill child, parent, spouse or domestic partner. Mr. Spitzer’s plan would also cover workers who take off to care for grandchildren, foster parents and parents-in-law.
To allay employers’ concerns about the plan’s cost, Mr. Spitzer is proposing that the leave be paid by workers rather than by employers, with 45 cents a week deducted from every worker’s paycheck.
The United States is, frankly, barbaric when you compare our family leave policies to those of other industrialized nations. It's particularly strange, since there's a conservative argument for family leave just as much as there is a progressive one. At any rate, a number of hurdles remain -- not just convincing employers' organizations, but dealing with the question of whether unions will be able to opt out of a state policy in favor of policies they've negotiated on their own. And -- surprise surprise -- there's the hurdle of convincing Joe Bruno to give New York's working families a break.
Governor Spitzer's proposal is of course nowhere near as generous as what European countries provide, and it's a shame that this sort of social insurance has to be created on the state level at all, instead federally. Still, it looks like a real step forward.
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Family Leave | New York | Eliot Spitzer
By your leave...
This comment is going to wander, as I'm not taking the time to collect my thoughts:
When parental leave acts were passed, allowing new parents to take time off from work, without pay, and then be guaranteed their old job back, I cheered.
This, however, is a different matter.
Sure, it's nice to be able to take time off from work in order to care for a sick relative. And being confident that you will have a job when you're ready to return is a good thing.
But requiring employers (if that's the deal -- more below) to pay for employees who aren't working is ridiculous.
Job-protected leave is vastly different from paid leave. The former is merely a way of guaranteeing that people can take time to take care of family members who need them. The latter is paying people who don't work. It's an unfunded mandate on employers.
There are other options. For example, we already have the "Earned Income Tax Credit" (EITC) for parents who can only earn a small amount because they have to take care of their children. Expanding that to cover people who are caring for sick relatives could work.
That's just one idea, off the top of my head.
Regarding Spitzer's plan -- who gets the 45¢ per week that is "deducted" from employees' paychecks? Where is the money for the current "paid leave" for giving birth coming from? If it's not coming from employers, but from a state disability plan (to which employees currently pay in with a deduction from every paycheck), is that where the new deduction will go?
There are serious problems with paying people not to work. Currently, the only way you can get the money is by giving birth -- a verifiable event. Under the new plan, how will we (the taxpayer) or the employer, whoever is paying, know that people aren't just gaming the system?
Until these questions are answered, and alternative plans considered, we should not pass this initiative.