Paid Sick, Family, and Medical Leave

Due to a widespread lack of paid family and medical leave, workers have to make difficult choices between their careers and their caregiving responsibilities precisely when they need their paychecks the most, such as following the birth of a child or when they or a loved one falls ill. This lack of choice often leads workers to cut their leave short. It can also lead workers to forgo much-needed pay, leave the labor force altogether, or make poor-quality care arrangements for their children or other loved ones.

Our current lack of paid family leave requires workers to make impossible choices between work and family and hampers their economic security, and this burden clearly falls disproportionately on women. However, the solution to this problem is achievable: some individual companies have implemented their own family leave policies, almost all industrialized nations have a comprehensive national paid family leave program, and a small number of states have created successful family leave insurance programs. EARN groups are working to expand access to paid leave through all of these channels. In some cities and states, they are working on laws that would require employers to provide their employees with paid family leave. In others, they are helping to craft government insurance programs that would supplement wages during leave, and encouraging federal lawmakers to consider similar programs nationwide.

Because there is no federal law that ensures all workers are able to earn paid sick days, millions of workers throughout the United States are forced to go to work when they are sick. When someone goes to work while sick, they are less productive, more prone to mistakes, and more likely to spread a contagious diseases than if they stayed home. Lack of paid sick days is a serious problem, particularly for low-wage workers, who are far less likely to have access to paid sick days than higher-wage workers.

State and local laws that grant all workers the ability to earn paid sick days regardless of their job or wage level have provided critical financial security to workers and their families. Access to paid sick days allows workers to rest, get the health care they need, and fully recover from an illness before returning to work. It also allows workers to continue paying their monthly bills, even in the event of illness. EARN groups have researched the impact of paid sick days legislation on workers, businesses, and government budgets, and provided support to paid sick days campaigns in states and cities across the country.

Paid family leave helps more people stay in their jobs, increasing parental labor force participation, especially among women.

Publications

Laying the Foundation: A Wealth-building Agenda for Georgia Women

  • October 19, 2017
  • Melissa Johnson

Building and growing the wealth of women is a necessary concern for Georgia lawmakers striving to keep the state growing and prospering. Women are a majority of Georgia’s adult population and are the primary or co-breadwinners in more than half of Georgia households with children. Women help shoulder the weight of well-being for Georgia’s families, businesses and the economy as a whole now more than ever. This report offers three strategic policy solutions Georgia can pursue to strengthen the financial foundation for the state’s women: paid family leave, support for homeownership and increased entrepreneurship.

Your voice, your vote: Paid Sick Days and Family Leave

Everyone gets sick, but more than a million workers in North Carolina have no opportunity to earn paid sick leave, and even fewer can take longer-term paid leave to address a serious health condition or welcome a new child. When illness inevitably strikes, they must take unpaid time off—sacrificing their wages so they can get well or take care of sick loved ones or recover from pregnancy. They may even face retaliation from their employers and could lose their jobs. North Carolina needs an economy that works for all and ensures broadly shared prosperity.

Research has shown that paid leave policies, such as earned paid sick days and family and medical leave insurance, benefit workers, businesses, and the economy as a whole. Providing workers with paid sick days keeps sick workers at home, preventing contagion from spreading to other workers and customers, and giving them the time they need to fully recover and return to normal levels of productivity. In turn, this boosts businesses bottom lines by reducing turnover and the costs associated with training new employees.

Ensuring workers have paid time off to welcome a newborn, recover from childbirth, or deliver extended medical care to a loved one provides yields similar economic benefits, along with keeping new women attached to the workforce and earning higher wages in the years after childbirth than those that don’t. Additionally, providing paid family leave to all workers, regardless of business size, helps level the playing field for small businesses which have often have trouble matching the more generous leave policies of larger employers.

Gov. Christie Guts Family Leave Bill in Conditional Veto

Today Gov. Christie gutted a landmark bill improving New Jersey’s paid family leave program (A-4927), taking out every single important policy change and leaving behind modest mandates to improve the state’s processing of paid leave claims and the public reporting about those claims. And in an ironic twist, the governor removed some of the dollars ($3 million, to be exact) needed to make such improvements in his budget veto a few weeks ago.
The legislation (A-4927) closely followed several key recommendations laid out by New Jersey Policy Perspective in an April report.

Gov. Christie’s gutting of these paid leave improvements is a slap in the face to New Jersey’s working families. New Jersey can – and must – do better for its working caregivers, so we can build a strong workforce and a strong economy.

The governor’s veto message focuses only on the modest costs associated with these fixes, and completely ignores the enormous benefits – both the workers and to businesses.