Work and family agenda faces tough climate

updated 3:16 p.m. ET Dec. 7, 2008

NEW YORK - In some ways, conditions couldn’t be better for those seeking to make family leave and paid sick days available to more American workers. In some ways, conditions could scarcely be worse.

The work/family cause now has ardent champions in President-elect Barack Obama and self-described mom-in-chief Michelle Obama, who says it will be among her top priorities. The strengthened Democratic majority in Congress is certain to lend a hand.

Yet the ambitious agenda, featuring bills that would for the first time mandate paid sick days and paid family leave nationwide for many businesses, is colliding head-on with the worst economic crisis in decades, giving wary employers and their allies fresh ammunition for their fight against the mandates.

“A recession is not the time to raise the cost of work,” said Douglas Besharov, a public policy expert with the American Enterprise Institute. “If Obama gives in to his constituent groups, he may well make it much more difficult to fix the economic crisis.”

Liberal activists say the meltdown should send the opposite message.

“Bad economic times are the worst times to lose a job because your child is sick or your father has a stroke,” insists Ellen Bravo, a Milwaukee author and teacher who advocates on behalf of working women.

National debate expected
Events of recent months, as the meltdown intensified, give hints of a seesaw national debate that likely lies ahead.

In Milwaukee, voters on Election Day made their city the third — after San Francisco and Washington, D.C. — to require private employers to provide paid sick days.

However, a proposed ballot measure that would have imposed a similar sick-day mandate statewide in Ohio was withdrawn by its backers after Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland came out against it. He worried it would place the state’s businesses at a disadvantage until there was a federal sick-day law.

In Washington state, the Democrats who hold power say they will have to delay the start of a paid family leave plan because of budget woes. And in New Jersey, Republican lawmakers citing the meltdown want to postpone implementation of a paid family leave law which is due to take effect July 1.

Advocates of pro-worker reform contend the economic crisis makes their cause all the more valid.

“Laws and policies that support families in their everyday struggles are more important than ever,” said Debra Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women and Families. “The risk of losing pay, or a job, is even greater because jobs are going to be so scarce.

“I know our opposition will say the opposite — it’s an economy that has everybody quite fearful,” Ness said. “This is a time when families need these kind of protections the most.”

U.S. ranks behind other nations
Even in favorable economic times, the United States ranks behind other developed countries in regard to many family-friendly workplace policies. According to McGill University’s Institute for Health and Social Policy:

• The U.S. is one of only four countries out of 173 in a recent survey that doesn’t guarantee some form of paid maternity leave; the others are Liberia, Swaziland and Papua New Guinea.
• Sixty-six countries, but not the U.S., ensure that fathers either receive paid paternity leave or have a right to paid parental leave.
• At least 145 countries provide paid sick days, with 136 providing a week or more annually, while the U.S. has no federal law providing for paid sick days.

There’s no timetable yet for work/family legislation to be pushed in the new Congress, but activists predict relatively prompt action on the Healthy Families Act, which would require businesses with at least 15 employees to provide seven paid sick days per year. Most American workers are eligible for paid sick days through individual company policies, but more than 46 million workers are not — including about three-quarters of low-wage workers.

Perhaps further along in the congressional calendar, Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., wants to push his proposal for eight weeks of paid family leave, to be funded through shared employer/employee premiums. The leave could be used by workers to cope with their own illness, to care for an ailing child, spouse or parent, or to be at home with a newborn or newly adopted child.

Dodd was the author of the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act, which has enabled millions of workers to take unpaid leaves but excludes about 40 percent of the work force whose employers have fewer than 50 workers. Barack Obama has proposed expanding this law to cover employers with 25 or more workers.

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