Biden paid family leave plan aims to bring US into line with global peers
When Tameka Henry and her family members contracted coronavirus in December, she worried about whether they would recover. She worried about her 14-year-old daughter, who has asthma. She worried about her husband, who has a disability and requires her care.
She also worried about the bills piling up as she took unpaid leave from her work.
“There were days where my daughter looked over at me and asked, ‘Mom, are we going to die?’ Because we were so sick,” Henry said. “And then I’m worried about, yes, we need to stay alive, but also how are we going to pay these bills? Because I’m not getting paid for this time off.”
Joe Biden has now introduced a groundbreaking proposal to help families like Henry’s. As part of his American Families Plan, the president is calling for a $225bn investment to provide 12 weeks of paid parental, family and sick leave to virtually all American workers in the next 10 years.
“No one should have to choose between a job and paycheck or taking care of themselves and their loved ones – a parent, a spouse, or child,” Biden said in his first presidential address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday.
The proposal marks a historic first: no US president has ever before introduced a plan to create a comprehensive paid leave program at the national level. After decades of pushing for such a program, paid leave advocates feel like it is at last within reach, as Democrats control the White House and Congress. Activists say it is an issue whose time has finally come.
For Henry, who has been juggling the responsibilities of her job and care of her husband for years, a national paid leave program is “long overdue”. Many progressive activists and lawmakers agree, noting it has been 28 years since Bill Clinton signed the Family and Medical Leave Act, which provides workers with unpaid leave to care for themselves or loved ones.
The New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand has introduced her bill, the Family Act, to provide workers with 12 weeks of paid leave, in every session of Congress since 2013. She celebrated Biden’s announcement that he is including a very similar proposal in his American Families Plan.
“I am proud that President Biden has made permanent universal paid family and medical leave –modeled on the Family Act – a top priority for the American Families Plan,” Gillibrand said in a statement. “I enthusiastically support President Biden’s progressive expansion of wage replacement for lowwage workers, delivering help to those in need.”
If enacted, Biden’s proposal would help close a safety net gap that has made the US an outlier among wealthy nations. According to Vicki Shabo, a paid leave expert at the New America thinktank, the US is the only highwealth country without guaranteed paid maternity leave. It is also one of five without required paid parental leave for fathers or non-birth parents and one of just two without a paid sick leave guarantee.
“We have the unique and unfortunate approach that people should go it alone with respect to their employers,” Shabo said of the lack of a national paid leave program. “As a result, our workforce, women’s workforce participation in particular, has suffered, and it makes it really, really hard for people to manage the dual demands of job and family when serious health and care needs arise.”
The coronavirus pandemic threw these daily challenges into stark relief. When the pandemic started, only about 20% of American workers had paid family leave through their jobs. Over the course of the past year, millions of women have left the American workforce as jobs disappeared and caregiving duties mounted, particularly with children unable to attend school.
“We really need to rethink how we really value caregiving in this country,” said Carol Joyner, the director of the labor project at Family Values @ Work. “Women have been saying this for a very long time, but the pandemic has essentially demonstrated that women are carrying the caregiving burden in this country.”
The pandemic also demonstrated the urgent need to provide paid family leave for all working women, Joyner added. After all, many low-wage workers who have performed essential duties in the past year do not currently qualify for paid leave through their employers.
“The folks that were saving our lives and are saving our lives during this pandemic – bringing us food, treating us in the hospitals – they are least likely to have paid leave,” Joyner said.
Joyner’s organization is part of a coalition of groups participating in a $6m media and organizing campaign to push Congress to approve national paid leave.
“We often say what had been our mission before the pandemic now feels like our mandate,” said Dawn Huckelbridge, the director of Paid Leave for All, which is also participating in the campaign. “This could be a once-in-ageneration opportunity to learn something from this crisis and to do something that will help all working families’ lives.”
With Democrats in control of Congress and probably able to pass Biden’s proposal using budget reconciliation, meaning they would not need any Republican support in the Senate, there are “a lot of political stars aligned right now”, Huckelbridge added.
“This is something that we absolutely must do coming out of 2020,” Huckelbridge said. “And it’s something we can do, so there’s no excuses.”
Henry said her family needed a paid leave program even before the pandemic, but she can still benefit from such a policy now. Since contracting coronavirus, Henry has struggled with lingering symptoms of the virus, including fatigue and mental fog. She has been unable to take paid time off from work because she already used her limited sick days when she had the virus.
She said her situation is not unique, and it underscores the need to pass national paid leave as soon as possible.
“It’s not just me. It’s so many workers and Americans who need this,” Henry said. “It’s past time. It’s time for them to make bold investments in our care infrastructure.”