U.S. sets own course on maternity leave

Changes shot down
There have been several attempts at introducing paid maternity leave in the United States. The Clinton administration wanted to allow states to use unemployment funds for maternity leaves, but that was shot down by the Bush administration after opposition from business groups concerned with increased contribution to state unemployment funds.

A bill introduced in the House by Reps. Pete Stark and George Miller, both D-Calif., would establish a fund that would replace 55 percent of pay for workers on FMLA leave. Contributions to the fund would come from employers.

“There are a couple of central problems when we look at paid leave legislation. The first is: who’s paying for it?” asks Michael Eastman, director of labor policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

U.S. employers already pay $21 billion a year in direct costs related to the FMLA, Eastman says, in addition to indirect costs like additional overtime for those who fill in for workers on leave.

Waldfogel agrees that it’s too much to ask employers to shoulder the cost of introducing paid maternity leave.

“As long as what we have in mind ... is asking employers to both hold the job open and pay the salary, we’re going to get tremendous resistance from employers,” she says.

California went a different route, and last year introduced family leave with around 50 percent pay for six weeks, paid from a fund that employees, not employers, pay into.

“Once they did that, there were no longer any objections from employers,” Waldfogel says.

Five states — California, Hawaii, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island — and Puerto Rico require employers to have temporary disability programs, which pay benefits if the pregnancy is defined as a disability by a doctor. A few others have infant care programs that pay subsidies to low-income families for up to two years.

In New York City, Kelsey Goss, a public-school teacher, is trying to build her tutoring business so she and her husband can stay afloat financially when she goes on unpaid maternity leave in October.

“When I tell people that as a teacher I get zero paid maternity leave, they’re stunned,” she says. “In a job like that, that’s about taking care of kids, those are the benefits?”

How does she think her benefits compare with Europe?

“I don’t even want to know,” she says.

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