Currently, the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) is the only federal law that helps America’s workers meet the dual demands of work and family when they have a new child or are faced with a medical crisis. The FMLA provides unpaid, job-protected leave for up to 12 weeks a year to care for a newborn, newly adopted or foster child, to care for a seriously ill family member, or to recover from serious illness. Since enactment of the FMLA in 1993, workers have used it more than 100 million times.
But without some form of wage replacement, the FMLA’s promise of job-protected leave is out-of-reach for millions of hard-working women and men who simply cannot afford to take the unpaid leave it provides. In fact, a Labor Department study found that 78 percent of workers who qualified for and needed to take FMLA leave did not do so because they could not afford to go without a paycheck1. More than one-third of workers (34 percent) who take FMLA receive no pay during leave, and another large share of the population has only limited paid leave available to them2.
When a personal or family medical crisis strikes, workers frequently have no choice but to take unpaid leave or quit their jobs. As a result, for many workers the birth of a child or an illness in the family forces them into a cycle of economic distress. Twenty-five percent of all poverty spells begin with the birth of a child3.
The lack of paid family and medical leave hits low-income workers hardest: almost three in four low-income employees who take family and medical leave receive no pay, compared to one in three middle income workers and one in four workers with high incomes. In addition, nearly one in three workers (29 percent) who receive less than full pay while on leave end up borrowing money to make ends meet; another 38 percent put off paying bills; and nine percent go on public assistance to cover lost wages4.
The rest of the world has been providing paid family leave for years. A study by the Project on Global Working Families at Harvard University found that the U.S. lags far behind other nations in providing paid family leave, with 168 nations guaranteeing paid leave to women in connection with childbirth. The United States is the only industrialized country without paid family leave.
The National Partnership is working with state and national advocates and policy makers to make paid family leave a reality for working families. Already, California and New Jersey have enacted paid family leave programs, and Washington State passed a law that will offer workers paid parental leave. Across the country, policy makers and advocates are mobilizing behind a range of innovative proposals to make paid family leave more available. Working families should not have to choose between the jobs they need and the families they love.
1 Department of Labor 2000 Report at 2-16.
2 Id. at 4-5 to 4-6.
3 The David and Lucille Packard Foundation, 2001. The Future of Children: Caring for Infants and Toddlers. Richard Berman, ed. Los Altos, California:11(1).
4 Department of Labor 2000 Report, Chapter 4.
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