Library Board plans to debate parental leave

How does Rapp stack up compared to other Virginia communities?

In early August, Rappahannock County Public Library trustees Maureen Harris and Theresa Sidrow went to the Board of Supervisors meeting with a mission: to urge Rappahannock County to adopt a more progressive parental leave policy.

Currently Rappahannock County o ers eligible employees 12 weeks of unpaid job-protected leave as required by the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA). And, according to several members of the Library Board, the library adheres to the personnel policies of the county.

But over the past few months the Library Board of Trustees has started to rethink leave bene ts. “It seems to us unconscionable that in the year 2020 an employee who becomes pregnant would not receive a salary,” Harris said.

Though the library board is hesitant to make any policy changes that are inconsistent with Rappahannock County, Harris, Sidrow and Library Board President Victoria Fortuna are advocating that something be done before one of the library’s employees goes on parental leave in October.

The trustees are planning to discuss the parental leave policy again at their regular meeting on Thursday, Aug. 27, and the Rappahannock County Board of Supervisors are paying attention.

“A parental leave policy supports middle class working families and is especially important for working class families,” Fortuna said. “Because, I mean, you go without a paycheck for twelve weeks? That is tough. Most people are not able to go without pay for twelve weeks and not receive unemployment compensation.”

Fortuna is on to something. The Pew Research Center reports that 69 percent of parental leave takers took less time o than they needed or wanted to because they “could not a ord to lose more wages or salary.” And according to research conducted by the public policy think tank New America, one in four new mothers return to work a mere two weeks a er delivering their babies.

Rappahannock County’s parental leave policy is not all that unusual compared with other municipal government leave policies. Though Gov. Northam signed an executive order in 2018 ensuring commonwealth employees could receive eight weeks of paid parental leave, by and large local governments have not followed suit.

Of the more than 120 counties and cities surveyed by the Rappahannock News, only nine (Alexandria, Arlington, Danville, Fairfax, Goochland, Mecklenburg, Norfolk, Richmond and Virginia Beach) have adopted paid parental leave policies.

Nationwide, only about 15 percent of government workers and 14 percent of civilian workers receive paid parental leave, according to the Pew Research Center.

Despite consensus among American pediatricians and gynecologists that new families should be guaranteed at least six weeks of paid leave, studies by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and Harvard University have found that the U.S. has the single stingiest parental leave policy of any industrialized nation.

The last time Congress passed family leave legislation was in 1993, when FMLA was enacted to grant some — not all — working parents in the U.S. 12 weeks of unpaid leave.

By contrast, most OECD countries established policies guaranteeing an average of 17 weeks of paid leave to new parents as early as 1970. Since then, the average paid family leave period in industrialized nations has tripled from 17 to 51 weeks, despite the U.S. continuing to weigh the average down by o ering a miserly sum of zero.

In Canada, where both parents receive paid family leave bene ts, 90 percent of new mothers take leave for an average of 44 weeks (roughly 10 months) to care for their newborns. But in the U.S. 50 percent of new mothers return to work less than ve weeks a er the birth of their children, citing the fact that they couldn’t nancially make ends meet without a paycheck.

But the tides are changing. Over the past ve years the number of U.S. employers o ering paid parental leave has increased from 25 percent to 40 percent, according to a study by the health bene t consulting group Mercer. And in December 2019, Trump became the rst Republican president to support paid family leave, signing a measure that secures six weeks of paid parental leave for federal employees.

Surveys by the Urban Institute report that access to paid parental leave correlates directly with employee retention, productivity, morale and loyalty.

Here in Rappahannock, Fortuna told this newspaper that “the county has stated ... they would like to encourage younger families to come to the county to stay here. If you want to encourage young people to stay and/or to be employed by the county while they’re here ... then you ought to try to support them.”

The Library Board is expected to discuss their parental leave policy again at their regular meeting on Thursday, Aug. 27 at 4:30 p.m.