Join Our Campaign for Paid Family Leave!

The PA Coalition for Healthy Families and Workplaces (led by PathWays PA and the Women and Girls Foundation) is beginning a statewide campaign to secure paid family leave for all workers across the commonwealth - and we want you to be involved!

Please fill out the form below to show your support for the campaign. We look forward to working with you to engage women and men across this state in this important campaign to support workers, businesses, and families. You can also share this link with other organizations who you think should be involved.

We hope you will join us at 2 PM on October 4, 2016, for our first all-coalition conference call! Please email Emma@wgfpa.org if you are able to attend.

https://goo.gl/forms/D9Jm9ObJCUlDtWBs1

We've Come Not So Long A Way

This post is part of the Family Values @ Work Blog Carnival. To view more blog posts from the carnival, visit http://familyvaluesatwork.org/fmla/blog-carnival.  

1993. Just typing the year sets my mind spiraling through happy memories. 1993 was the year I began high school. It was a year of flannel shirts and clunky boots. It was the year I fell in love with baseball, and the year my dad and I went to see the Phillies in the playoffs. It is a year I can’t think of without smiling.

A lot has changed since then. My fashion sense is (somewhat) different, and so are the members of the Phillies. It’s been five years since I watched a playoff game with my dad: we managed to watch the Phillies on a tiny TV in his hospital room a few months before he died. As for my high school friends, when we talk, it is mostly on Facebook.

Oddly enough, though, what my high school friends and I often talk about is a bill that was signed into law on February 5, 1993, without any of us paying much attention: the Family and Medical Leave Act. This act guarantees up to 12 weeks of job-protected unpaid leave to qualified workers in order to care for a new baby or a seriously ill family member.

Often, it isn’t the act itself that comes up in conversation. But I always get the same question, whether speaking to friends with conservative or liberal backgrounds, and it is always asked with the same urgency.

“So, when are you going to start working on paid FMLA? I would support that. We really need it.”

My friends know that I work at PathWays PA, a group that led a large coalition twice to pass a paid sick days ordinance in Philly, only to have it vetoed by the mayor. Last year we were one vote shy of overturning that veto – and we’ll be back. Workers need to be able to earn paid sick days because FMLA, while a great step forward, doesn’t cover routine illness.

My friends’ question shouldn’t come as a surprise: most of them, like most people in this country, are breadwinners and caregivers. They needed time off in order to give birth or to adopt, and most didn’t have the luxury of taking that time without pay. After all, you can’t tell the bank or the utility company, “Sorry, I won’t be paying this month because I’m having a baby with no paid leave.”

Today, about two and a half times as many people as in 2000 who are eligible and need FMLA leave are not taking it, chiefly because they cannot afford it. That means most new mothers who worked through their pregnancy return to the job even before their twelve weeks of FMLA are up - if they had access to FMLA at all. Only about one-fifth of new mothers are covered by the FMLA.

For my friends and for me, the past 21 years have been a time of growth and change. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for the FMLA. It was a great law in 1993, and it is still great today. But today’s working families need public policies that have grown with us and with our economy.

A Dad's Paid Leave Story

Jason's twin children were born at 28 weeks — and as a result, spent 69 days in neonatal intensive care. Thanks to New Jersey's paid family leave law, Jason and his wife Christie were able to take needed time off to care for their children. But for millions of parents, paid family leave is not an option. The FAMILY Act would change that. Find out more -- and get involved -- at www.familyvaluesatwork.org. And donate to support the many local organizations that work to bring new options to families throughout the country at https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/familyvaluesatwork.

New Study Stresses Need for Modern Workforce with Changing Workforce Demographics

The Economic Opportunity Institute is citing a new study from the University of New Hampshire that indicates recessionary periods serve to increase the proportion of wives in the workforce. Tracking workforce participation since 1988, this data shows the proportion of wives earning income has increased nearly 10% over the last 25 years, including those with children.

The study, "Recessions Accelerate Trend of Wives as Breadwinners", details the need for workers to be able to care for their families and not worry about making ends meet or losing their job. It goes on to say that paid sick days are essential for those few days each year when we catch a cold or our child wakes up with a fever.

In conclusion, the author of the study explains that life events requiring weeks or month of time away from work – an aging parent, a new child, a serious health condition – show the need for family and medical leave insurance: to provide economic security when it’s most important for a worker to be with loved ones.  These policies increase productivity and employee retention, thereby making businesses stronger.