Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Paid Leave: Do the Right Thing. I Don't Care If It's For the Wrong Reason.


The United States likes to celebrate its "exceptionalism", except when it's exceptional on the wrong side of the bell curve. Did you know, for example, that the US is the only developed nation that doesn't require employees to have some sort of guaranteed paid leave -- either sick leave (to care for themselves or a child) or family leave (to care for a newborn or newly-adopted child or seriously ill family member)?

The only protection workers have is the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act which guarantees some workers up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a child or a family member or themselves. (More info about the FMLA is available from the Department of Labor; for example, here and here)

As reported in Claire Cain Miller's "Upshot" column in today's New York Times, maybe paid leave will finally get traction here. A few states require sick leave; a few cities require family leave. But there has been to date no political will for a national policy. This despite the fact that, as Miller notes,
Polls show that the vast majority of Americans support both. Eighty-five percent are in favor of requiring employees to offer paid sick leave, and 80 percent support paid family leave.

You'd expect politicians to want to get in front of that parade. And really - sick leave? Isn't that a no-brainer? I don't want my waiter serving me food when she's fighting off a cold. Ugh. And I don't want my financial analyst mis-entering data because he's focused on what's happening to his sick child at home.

So who's against this idea?
 Corporate America, as a whole, has long fought paid leave. Executives, especially at small businesses, say it burdens employers with additional costs and the need to temporarily replace employees. Some studies have found that when governments require paid leave, employers pay for it by decreasing employees’ wages.

But this argument is the same one that got trotted out in opposition to the Family and Medical Leave Act. It was used to argue against overtime laws. It is used every time increases in the minimum wage are proposed. And yet, somehow, every time those small steps are taken to improve workers' lives, businesses manage to adapt and succeed.

Moreover, not all small businesses agree. Miller interviewed the owner of one small business who offers her employees 12 weeks of paid parental leave because "It was not just the right thing to do but also a really important retention policy."

With the unemployment rate now below 6 percent, retention rates are more and more important. So maybe we can get employers to focus on doing the right thing. I don't care if it's for the wrong reason.





No comments:

Post a Comment