What Family Leave?
Washington Dispatch: The nation's workplace policies are on par with those of some Third World countries. Does the Bush administration want to keep it that way?
June 23, 2008
|
|
When it passed in 1993, the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) was supposed to be the beginning of a new movement to reshape the workplace to reflect the needs of working families. But the bill—allowing some workers to take a few weeks off, unpaid, to care for a new baby or a sick family member without losing their jobs—is incomplete. It does nothing for people who simply can't afford to take unpaid leave, while leaving out 40 percent of the workforce, including millions of workers employed by companies with fewer than 50 employees in a 75-mile radius, those who work part time, or, strangely, flight attendants. The US is the only industrialized country in the world that doesn't provide paid maternity leave, putting it on par with such nations as Liberia and Swaziland, according to one study. But for 15 years the FMLA has been the beginning and the end of federal work/family policymaking.
Groups like the US Chamber of Commerce have relentlessly attacked the popular law as an expensive administrative burden rife with abuse, and Republicans have responded by obstructing even the most minor attempts at expanding its reach. They've found an ally in President Bush, whose father twice vetoed the original FMLA, and who is quietly trying to gut the law through the regulatory process before he leaves office. Earlier this year, the Department of Labor proposed new regulations that would, among other things, make it easier for employers to deny leave requests and allow employers to directly quiz an employee's doctor about his or her medical condition. (Currently, employers need an employee's permission to contact physicians, and then they must have a medical professional, rather than the boss, contact the doctor.)
Frustration with federal inaction has led many states to move forward to create their own family-friendly workplace laws. In May, New Jersey became the third state in the nation to provide paid parental leave, along with California and Washington. Earlier this year, Washington, DC, passed legislation requiring employers to give some workers at least seven days a year of paid sick leave. Other states are considering following suit as political support grows for helping people juggle work and family. Meanwhile, the federal government is still stuck in 1993.
All that, however, may change this year, as Democrats have pushed the issue to the forefront of the political agenda, both in Congress and in the presidential election, where Democrats may make work/family policies an important wedge issue in the fall.
The new Democratic Congress has proposed a flurry of legislation designed to bring federal workplace policy into the 21st century. In January, for the first time in 15 years, Congress amended the FMLA to allow family members caring for wounded service members to take 26 weeks of job-protected unpaid leave and expanded the law's definition of "caregiver" to include siblings and other next of kin, not just parents. Last week, the House voted to allow federal workers to take 4 of their 12 weeks of FMLA leave with pay after the birth or adoption of a child. Virginia senators Jim Webb and John Warner have introduced companion legislation in the Senate. (Bush has already threatened to veto the bill, calling it a "costly, unnecessary, new paid-leave entitlement.")
Other bills introduced over the past year would extend the FMLA to many more workers, make some of the leave paid, require paid sick days for full-time workers, and increase workplace flexibility. And a bill that would finally allow the FMLA to cover flight attendants, who don't qualify because of a quirk in the way their hours are calculated, passed the House in May by a vote of 402 to 9, a sign that many of these bills have bipartisan support.
Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama signaled his intention to make this a campaign issue on Friday, when his wife Michelle made a visit to a lunch sponsored by the National Partnership for Women and Families, one of the biggest players in the FMLA debate. Before an audience of 1,000 of the group's donors and guests, Obama told stories about her own personal struggles as a working mother, and reiterated her husband's support for measures that would help take some of the stress off American families. "It's a cause I have championed and will continue to champion," she said. Work/family issues were a staple of Hillary Clinton's stump speeches, and something she has long advocated in the Senate. But Obama is also on record supporting virtually the entire package of Democratic bills designed to support families in the workplace and is not entirely a Johnny-come-lately to the issue. In 2004, when he was elected to the Senate, he hired Karen Kornbluh, the former director of the Work and Family Program at the New America Foundation, as his policy director, giving her, and her pet cause, a prominent place in his political operation. Kornbluh's fingerprints are everywhere on his positions in this area. Obama has called for expanding the FMLA to cover smaller companies and has pledged to create a federal fund to help states create paid-leave programs. He has also supported measures that would give parents time off to attend their children's school functions and meetings without fear of losing their jobs.
Polls consistently show that most Americans strongly support policies like expanding the FMLA, giving Obama an opportunity to distinguish himself from his opponent on something Americans of all stripes care about. John McCain has remained mum when it comes to the expansion of family leave, though he voted to pass the original law back in 1993. Given what's happening in the states, it's clear that Americans are hungering for change on this front. As Debra Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women and Families said on Friday, ticking off a list of the group's accomplishments this year, "If we can accomplish all this in a recession, in an election year, in the seventh year of an administration that has turned such a blind eye to women and families, just think of what we'll be able to accomplish next year."
Stephanie Mencimer is a reporter in Mother Jones' Washington, DC, bureau and the author of Blocking the Courthouse Door: How the Republican Party and Its Corporate Allies Are Taking Away Your Right to Sue (Free Press, 2006).
in a cruel twist of irony the right is responsible for helping to destroy the very institution they claim to represent - the good ole' american family.
Why is it that a nation that is SO wealthy in so many areas is so ... bankrupt when it comes to taking care of its own? Granted, the government has steamrolled over every attempt to better health care benefits, and the feeble window dressing that the FMLA is is really rather sad. But ultimately whose fault is that? It is ours, the citizens of the U.S. If we want things to change, we need to force it. We need a revolution not of violence, but of thought. We need to get out of the complacent "well, it's the government's fault, we can't do anything about it" attitude and force things to happen. Unfortunately the best and only way to do that, barring violent overthrow, which i am not condoning, is through the election process - and that, more often than not, means electing different versions of the same characters.
Amercia, wake up. We need a change. I don't know if Obama can bring it, but McCain sure as hell won't. Look at some of the other "first world" industrialized nations and their healthcare policies, and then compare those with what's available in the States. If you don't become angry enough out of pure shock when you see what your fellow travlers here on planet earth are getting out of their respective governments to want to force a change in the status quo, i'll be surprised.
By the way, i'd love to move back to the States some day, but until the healthcare situation AND the insurance situation AND the war situation gets taken care of, i'm staying put.
Finally, nmc, i couldn't agree more.
gene
I never minded paying taxes in when i was in the States because i assumed that the money i paid was being put to good use, and furthermore that it was being used to benefit not only myself, but more importantly, my fellow citizens. Now when i look back and realize just how little i got after paying 1/3 of my salary in taxes, it angers me to no end. If the little people are forced to fork over a certain percentage of our salary to the big machine that the government has become, the least they can do is give us our money's worth.
I took FMLA due to a herniated disc that was marginally operable; the back surgeon's opinion was that it may benefit from surgery but it likely would not. When the FMLA ran out, I had to go back to work or resign.
I chose to go back to work, but the engineering firm I worked for had already determined that since I am near 60 and have a back problem, it's time to go. They began a program of daily harassment, "special" treatment where everything I did required constant supervision and approval. This was a deliberate attempt to harass me out of the company, and it worked. I resigned and hired an attorney to sue them for age discrimination. We reached a settlement.
If you take FMLA, be aware that your employer will not consider this to be a trivial incident. You may very well be put on the [deleted]-can list. To me, this is the biggest shortcoming of FMLA; it doesn't protect people after they return to work.
-Wexler
This is exactly the problem, thats why I think the only way we can ever change things, other than violence, is to be able to vote for the pay and perks of those that hold political office.All politicians should be required to get paid whatever is the lowest legal minimum wage, live in the most physically and economically depressed are that they represent in the style and condition of anyone else living there, and get the same medical and work benefits that the worst off of us gets.Then they would have a real incentive to improve things, of course if that happened no one would want the job.
I have done that Gene, and I am truly discusted with our health care system here in the United States. It's set up to benefit the Insurance and pharmaceutical industries. Everyone makes a profit when one of us gets cancer! How immoral is that?
Changing the system means we have to end the corporate stranglehold on our democracy. Big Bu$ine$$ isn't going to give that up easily. It's going to be a long and hard struggle, but one we must take on and perservere. What other choice do we have?
So why don't they say what they really mean
'We wish you were never born'
They have no idea about what it takes to maintain families today---that is why are moral fabric is in decline.
No economic security or middle class NO FAMILIES
If any of these "polled" people knew what they would actually get from a government that cared about its people instead of corporate profit, they would be begging for more government not less.
I found I wasn't at all who I thought I was and I didn't like who I found.
The Conservatives seem to think if they have you looking one way you won't look the other. It works well for them and has for the last few years. They have all or most become more wealthy at the expense of the planet, the middle class and any children, grand children or great grand children ( if it all lasts that long) they may have.
Sadly change doesn't come about until they come on board. It is a fact that things change when this happens. I saw it with the end of the Viet Nam War.
My hope is the people with money and power in this country will come to a point when they put this country and its people first and end what I am afraid is the end of the USA as an example of the best a civilization can evolve to.
Its not about how many toys or the money you have. Its about how much you care and contribute to this world. America is taking a long track record of greatness and in one brief moment of time trashing it. What a sad way to end a wonderful dream.
tomedgar@halenet.com.au
from work to care for my chronically ill daughter. She is 5 months old and was born with a rare and complex heart
defect. After spending 4 months in the NICU of a children's hospital, she was discharged and basically sent home to
die. She is currently under Hospice care, here in our home. What has utterly amazed me during this time is the limited
amount of help and support there is for families in our situation. In an instant our lives changed - everything turned
upside down. One day, I was at work getting a paycheck and next day, I received a call that there was no hope for my
child, nothing else could be and I need to come get here - LIFE CHANGED! The day that my daughter came home, I
had to be on FMLA, and our family income stopped. What are families in our situation supposed to do when life
throws you a blow like this? And where do you turn? I’m grateful that my position at work is being held for 14 weeks
but our situation is likely to extend beyond 14 weeks, what then? And frankly, people work because their lives require
an income, what is the point of the job with no income. I have learned that has been more of hinderance than a help
because agencies that can provide assistance to us, won’t because I am still on a companies payroll! And before being
told “no”, you have to run all over town from one agencies to another seeking help. I have reached out to our local
department of social services, social worker through Hospice, I even the wife of our mayor who I am acquainted with
through work and again, I am stunned by the responses. I have been told that I should “just return to work”. Which to
me, is the most insensitive and idiotic statement I have ever heard. To those that made the comment, I would like to
know if they were in my shoes, if they would like to be sitting at their desks worried about the well-being of their child
all day and then receive a call that she died and you were not with her. It just blows my mind that in the richest, most
resourceful country in the world, that we sorely overlooked this area of need. Frankly, FMLA in its current form is of
no benefit to me. I've worked all of my life and paid my taxes and supported my country and now I feel abandoned and forgotten. I strongly support an amendment.