Paid family leave continues to be a hot topic. Although our state's troubled program, passed in 2007 but unfunded and unimplemented, has now been deferred again until 2012, employees in New Jersey will begin participating in a paid leave program next month after the Garden State became the third state in the country to adopt a paid leave program after California and Washington.
In Congress, the topic was hot today as the U.S. House Education and Labor Workforce Protection Subcommittee held hearings on HR 2460, the "Healthy Families Act," which mandates all but the smallest employers in the country provide up to seven paid sick days per year to employees, and HR 2339, the (rather inelegantly titled) "Family Income to Respond to Significant Transitions Act," which provides federal grants to states to fund paid family leave programs.
This on the heels of the House's passage last week of an act providing four weeks of paid parental leave for federal employees on leave to care for the birth or adoption of a new child.
AWB national affiliate the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and ally the Society for Human Resource Management both presented concerns with the approach in today's hearings, calling for more incentives toward flexibility in workplace leave management as opposed to broad and inconsistent mandates. The flexibility approach is favored in this short policy brieffrom the National Center for Policy Analysis.
Paid family leave, paid sick leave, mandates versus flexibility: employers will be hearing a lot more about it this summer and beyond.
