Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Frustration from demise of paid family leave felt in W.Va.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Jessi Garman, the mother of 3-year-old twin girls, has been searching for a job while also trying to have a third child with her husband, who’s in the military. Optimistic that Congress finally would approve paid family medical leave, she thought the time seemed right.
But that was before opposition by Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., torpedoed the proposal.
“It almost feels personal because Joe Manchin is my senator,” said Garman, of Milton.
Supporters of a decadesold proposal to let workers take time off for medical needs including childbirth, surgeries and end-oflife care are dealing with another disappointment in West Virginia, a poor state with one of the nation’s oldest populations.
State activists are still working on Manchin, said Kayla Young, a member of the state House of Delegates who also is helping with an advocacy group, Paid Leave Works for West Virginia. They hope some version of paid leave may be included in President Joe Biden’s social spending package.
“It’s disheartening, but I don’t think it’s over yet,” said Young.
Sarah Clemente hopes Young is right, since paid leave would have made things easier with all three of her children. Instead, she said, she had to take off two years and return to work a week after the birth of her youngest — Penelope, now 6 — whom she and husband Ryan adopted from a relative.
“We followed the textbook on what you’re supposed to do to be responsible, successful adults. And while we are there now, there was a lot of suffering and heartbreak,” said Clemente, 40, a health care manager. “And it’s still hard.”
Biden initially proposed 12 weeks of paid leave for new parents, people caring for loved ones or people recovering from an illness, but it wasn’t included in a $1.7 trillion framework released by the White House on Thursday.
Manchin, whose support is key due to the slim Democratic edge in the Senate, said he wanted to avoid turning the country into “an entitlement society.”
Democrats continue lobbying the senator, but he hasn’t shown signs of budging despite proposals to trim leave to four weeks or restrict it to new parents. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., said she has spoken extensively with Manchin, but he wasn’t focused on specifics of the proposal and had concerns about its cost.
In Manchin’s home county in northern West Virginia, Amber Gabor allowed that some time off would have come in handy when one of her kids — ages 2, 7 and 9, with another one expected in a couple of weeks — had to stay home for two weeks after a coronavirus case at his school. But 12 weeks of paid leave sounded excessive to her.
“I don’t see why you would need all that at one time, unless it was a maternity type of leave. But most (work) places offer that anyway,” said Gabor, a customer service representative for a power company.