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New Jersey a Step Closer to Guaranteeing Workers Paid Family Leave |
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New Jersey is a step closer to becoming the third state to guarantee workers paid time off to take care of an ill family member or newborn child. New Jersey State AFL-CIO President Charles Wowkanech tells us the New Jersey state Senate passed the paid family leave bill yesterday.
It provides up to six weeks of paid family leave at two-thirds salary (to a maximum of $524 a week). The measure would be financed by employee payroll deductions that would cost each worker in New Jersey a maximum of 64 cents a week, or $33 a year. The bill now is on the way to the House where approval is expected and Gov. Jon Corzine (D) says he will sign it if it gets to his desk.
California established the nation’s first paid family and medical leave program for workers in 2006, and Washington State’s paid family leave, approved last year, takes effect in Oct. 2009. Last year, a paid family leave bill (S. 1681) was introduced in the U.S. Senate. Related legislation, calling for paid sick days for workers, was introduced in the House and Senate last year.
Here’s the latest from Wowkanech.
The New Jersey State AFL-CIO strongly supports this pro-family legislation, which is a quality of life issue for the people of New Jersey. Workers should not have to choose between their jobs and having to take care of a newborn or ill family member.
We are the only industrialized nation that doesn’t have a paid family leave program and that fails to recognize the importance of allowing parents to spend the precious first weeks with their newborns, or the opportunity to care for an ailing loved one, without the fear of losing the roofs over their heads.
An overwhelming number of people in New Jersey (78 percent, according to a recent Rutgers University poll) are in favor of extending the current unpaid leave laws to provide six weeks of employee-paid (at approximately $33 a year) Family Leave Insurance.
Another study by the Labor Department in 2000 shows 90 percent of employers offering leave to employees under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act felt the benefit had a neutral or positive effect on their profitability.
Today, we are proud to share the news with our union brothers and sisters, and workers throughout New Jersey, that our state is one step closer to a Paid Family Leave insurance program.
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Way to go NJ! Its a hard fight, but we’ll win it!
What the American political dialog tends to disregard these days is that progressive policies like Paid Family Leave do keep VALUES at the heart of its ideology.
Compared to the rest of the developed and industrialized world, the United States lags appallingly behind when it comes to workers’ rights, to health care, to infant mortality, etc…we need to clean up our act when it comes to what many see as a critical malady in our employment policy. More than half of private-sector workers and seventy-nine percent of low-income workers have no paid sick leave. Under current FMLA policy, these workers are forced to use unpaid sick leave, which exacerbates the burden of health care expenses. Again, here we see that the system is set up to put already disadvantaged workers at a further financial disadvantage. This story is hinged around the values of fairness and community, seeing as most workers who are engaged in physically straining, back-breaking labor have no provision for them to take care of their health and secure financial stability. It’s about installing responsible policy to protect an essential sector of our workforce.
Progressive Future is an organization that unites policies that are responsible to the American public with the values of community, fairness and security. It’s about changing the dialog of the American political consciousness to make room for the idea that progressivism is a concept that unites policy around values. I encourage you to visit http://www.progressivefuture.org/join?id4=BL to find out more.