Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Palm Beach County may offer paid parental leave
Palm Beach County employees could soon receive paid time off to stay home with a newborn or adopted child.
County commissioners today will consider offering paid parental leave to 1,800 county employees not covered by collective bargaining.
Commissioner Melissa McKinlay asked the county to study offering the benefit. She says it’s unfair to force employees to use sick days and vacation time for adoption, foster-home placement or the birth of a child.
The county estimates it would cost about $195,500 a year to offer six weeks of paid leave at 100 percent of an employee’s salary.
Federal law requires employers to provide up to 12 weeks of job-protected, unpaid leave to care for a new child, but the United States is among only a handful of countries that does not mandate paid leave.
Politicians on both sides of the aisle have embraced paid parental leave, including President Donald Trump who has said he supports paid leave for women after childbirth.
The benefit is uncommon in the private sector. Only about 12 percent of workers in the private sector had access to paid family leave in 2015,
according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
Several local governments in Florida have adopted paid parental leave policies recently, including Miami-Dade County, Doral, Miami Beach, West Palm Beach, Wellington, St. Petersburg and Tampa.
In Miami-Dade County, employees can take up to six weeks of paid parental leave, receiving 100 percent of their pay the first two weeks, 75 percent the following two weeks and 50 percent the remaining two weeks.
Palm Beach County’s proposal would apply to employees supervised by the Board of County Commissioners, said Wayne Condry, director of human resources. It would not apply to independently elected officers, such as the sheriff, property appraiser and elections supervisor.
The county offers voluntary short-term disability coverage that can be used for the birth of a child. That coverage pays employees about two-thirds of their wages for up to eight weeks.
Union employees belonging to the International Association of Firefighters and the Communication Workers of America receive some pay for extended leave under their agreements with the county
The county’s study found there could be other costs as a result of adopting paid parental leave, including overtime expenses to cover shifts for employees on leave, the deferment of vacation time that would have been used for childbirth and potential higher costs as younger employees replace aging workers.