Is Paid Family Leave in Our Future?
April 10, 2024
While the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) requires U.S. employers (with at least fifty employees) to allow their employees to take up to twelve weeks off in order to, for example, care for a newborn, deal with a serious medical problem, or care for a very ill family member, it doesn’t pay them while they do so, and many can’t afford to take advantage of it.
Paid leave for employees remains a controversial idea in the United States, and most U.S. workers don’t have access to it. Yet, new parents in Estonia get eighty-two weeks of paid parental leave; new parents in Japan get fifty-two weeks of paid leave; and those in Sweden are entitled to sixty-eight weeks of paid time off. And these are just a few examples of the many countries with paid leave programs. Is paid family leave on a national scale in our future?
It may be. In December 2023, a bipartisan coalition of legislators in both houses of Congress announced their renewed effort to push for paid family leave for U.S. workers, with a promise to put forward a framework for such legislation in the coming months.
In the meantime, several states have enacted legislation granting some form of paid family and medical leave to qualified employees, either currently or in the near future. California, Colorado, Connecticut, Washington, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, and the District of Columbia grant some paid family leave at present. Delaware, Maine, Maryland, and Minnesota are scheduled to begin doing so in the next year or two as well. Vermont has a voluntary paid family leave program for state employees that it plans to expand to the private sector.
The state-by-state approach requires large employers to determine where all their employees are located and what each state mandates. Federal legislation and uniformity would certainly make things easier for HR departments, but how a federally mandated leave program would be funded (for instance, would employees be subject to a payroll tax to partly fund the program?) would also affect HR’s role.
Part of the discussion taking place in Washington at present is how to implement paid leave nationally in a way that won’t be too much of a burden for employers. Meanwhile, HR departments need to keep up with their state’s legislation regarding paid leave, which seems to continuously evolve, in order to remain compliant.