Campaign Milestones

June 2009:
A8743/S5791 is introduced in both the Assembly & Senate. 

April 2007:
The 2007 Launch of the Campaign for Time to Care.

March 2007:
The Working Families Time to Care Act is introduced in the Assembly. Link to A7130.

June 2005:
A1301 Passes the Assembly

About the Campaign

Paid Leave for New York Families: We Need Time to Care

Families have changed dramatically over recent decades, but employment practices have not kept pace. Today, most parents of young children – mothers as well as fathers – work, and an increasing number of us are also responsible for elderly or disabled relatives. With no paid leave policies in place, new parents must return to work before they or their children are ready. And when a crisis arrives, and working people must take time off to care for family members, they must forgo their paychecks, often at the very time they can least afford it.   

 

The hardship is the greatest for low and moderate income families who have the least savings to draw on, and are the least likely to have access to employer provided paid leave. Caring for children, or for sick family members in need, should not be a luxury only some people can afford.

 

New York should help working families by following the examples of California and New Jersey, states that have already established Paid Family Leave Insurance programs through an extension of their existing Temporary Disability Insurance (TDI) systems. Likewise, New York’s program could be administered through and funded like our existing Temporary Disability Insurance system to provide paid family leave for a very modest cost. The California and New Jersey programs, which provide maximum weekly benefits of up to $917 and $524 respectively, cost less than 65 cents a week per employee.  

The economic downturn is a reason for acting now, not an excuse for delay.  Paid leave insurance will help families struggling to make ends meet while shouldering the added expenses of a newborn or ailing family member.

The New York State Paid Family Leave Coalition is one of fourteen partners in the Family Values @ Work consortium, a national movement of grassroots state coalitions and policy experts fighting for paid time to care.  For more information on FVAW’s advocacy for paid sick days and paid family leave insurance, please visit familyvaluesatwork.org

The Problem

• A growing number of working people are responsible for children, aging parents or other relatives.

• Working parents have a tremendous need for paid family leave. Two-thirds (67 percent) of women with children under 18, and a majority (53 percent) of women with children under 3, are employed.

• Care for elderly relatives is an increasingly prevalent responsibility for working people. According to a recent national survey, 21 percent of the adult working population regularly provides care to another adult.

• Few workers can afford to take unpaid time off from work.

• Nationally, only 8 percent of workers have access to paid family leave. For the vast majority of workers, caring for a new child or sick relative means foregoing wages, something that few families can afford for long.

• The 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act granted workers in larger businesses the right to take up to 12 weeks for the birth or adoption of a child or to care for a sick family member.  Because the leave is unpaid, however, many of the working people who most need it simply cannot afford to take it (and of course, many workers are not  covered by FMLA protections at all).  According to the US Department of Labor, 78 percent of people who said they needed family leave in 2000, and were eligible for it under FMLA, couldn't afford to take it.

• There is no program currently in place to provide income stability to employees who leave work temporarily due to family needs.

• Existing safety-net programs, such as Unemployment Insurance, were designed in a period when it was expected that men would be the main breadwinners, and women would be available for unpaid care for family members.  As a result, these programs generally fail to provide for interruptions to employment due to family responsibilities.

• Paid time off can help employers too, by reducing costly turnover.  For example, parents of newborns or newly adopted children who are able to take time off to care for their infants are more likely to return to their initial employer.

 

The Solution

• Add a Paid Family Leave component to New York’s existing Temporary Disability Insurance program.

• Provide family leave benefits for a maximum of 12 weeks per year.  

• Raise the weekly benefit for both the existing TDI program and the new family leave benefit. The current cap of $170 has not been increased for 20 years and is woefully inadequate to meet today’s cost of living.  The cap should be doubled to $340 a week and then gradually phased up till it reaches 50 percent of the statewide average weekly wage.  Pegging the cap to the statewide average wage would mean that it automatically adjusts to changing wage levels over time.

• California created its system of Paid Family Leave by expanding its existing Temporary Disability Insurance program.  A similar approach makes sense for New York.  Using the existing system to collect contributions and administer the program will minimize administrative costs.

• Cover both “parental leave” for either parent to care for newborns or newly adopted children, and “family medical leave” to care for seriously ill family members, including children, spouses, siblings, domestic partners, parents, grandparents or in-laws.

• Be funded similarly to the existing TDI program.

• Cover all workers just like Temporary Disability Insurance does now (and give unionized public sector workers the choice of opting in). Excluding employees in firms with under 25 workers would leave out 1 out of 4 private sector wage earners in New York State. That’s 1.8 million taxpayers, disproportionately low-wage workers, the very people who can least afford to take unpaid leave and often lack paid sick days or vacation days, as well.