Paid family leave bill gets mixed reception
Local businesses have various views on the push
SANTA FE — A plan to add New Mexico to the list of states that provide government-run family leave allowing workers to take paid time off for births, illnesses and injuries is encountering turbulence at the Roundhouse, with some businesses expressing opposition and a new legislative analysis suggesting the program could be more expensive to administer than previously projected.
But supporters are pushing back, with Senate President Pro Tem Mimi Stewart, an Albuquerque Democrat, questioning the math of legislative analysts and saying proponents have offered to make adjustments to the bill to address business concerns.
“We’ve worked for two years on the bill,” Stewart told the Journal. “We have plenty of businesses that are supporting this.”
She also said backers have learned from the experiences of other states with paid family leave programs, such as Washington, which had to raise its employee and business premiums twice to ensure the solvency of its fund.
Since being filed, the paid family leave bill, Senate Bill 11, has passed one Senate committee and is awaiting a hearing in the Senate Finance Committee.
With the 60-day session now more than halfway over, Stewart said she planned to speak with the committee’s chairman, Sen. George Muñoz, D-Gallup, about getting the proposal on the panel’s agenda.
Local business owners have mixed views on the latest Roundhouse push, which comes a year after New Mexico enacted a paid sick leave mandate for non-government employers.
Del Esparza, CEO and founder of Esparza Digital and Advertising, said his company already offers a benefits package that includes up to four weeks of parental leave
for a primary caregiver, or up to two weeks for a non-primary caregiver.
He described such leave as beneficial for the mental and physical health of employees, and their performance at work, but said the proposed paid family leave law could hurt a small business like his, which has 16 employees.
The proposed law is “going to be detrimental to small businesses,” Esparza said. “To be able to just take three months off would be compromising.”
However, other business executives such as Mackenzie Enriquez, chief operating officer of Albuquerque-based Monstully LLC, a company that deals largely with association management in health care, support the legislation in its current form.
“It creates a really good work environment,” Enriquez said. “People do stress a lot and to have that benefit of knowing, ‘OK, this is covered and I’m able to take this time off if needs be,’ is huge. … Honestly, I think it’s a great idea.”
Deficit by 2028?
This year’s proposal, officially called the Paid Family and Medical
Leave Act, was crafted with feedback from a task force featuring advocacy groups, business owners and labor union representatives that met last summer and issued a final report in October.
It would require both employers and their workers to start making regular payments into a state fund in 2025, though businesses with fewer than five employees would be exempted. That fund would then be used to compensate employees who qualify for paid leave, starting in 2026.
A new Legislative Finance Committee analysis of the plan, said the task force that studied the issue likely underestimated how many people would file to take paid family leave under the proposed law, as both parents of a newborn child could qualify for up to 12 weeks of paid time off.
Specifically, the bill analysis projected the fund could face a $516 million deficit by the 2028 budget year — a daunting figure that could cause the state Workforce Solutions Department to order an increase in the premium amount that businesses and employees would have to pay into the fund.
Opponents of the proposal were quick to seize on the analysis, with Terri Cole of the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce saying the legislation would impose a “large escalating tax” on workers and employers alike.
But backers of the bill have disputed the analysis, saying it relies on U.S. Department of Labor surveys about the federal Family and Medical Leave Act — which requires employers to provide up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave in certain circumstances — and not on other states’ experiences with paid family leave laws.
The proposed contribution levels into the state fund “really should be plenty,” said Stewart, who also disputed an assumption in the legislative analysis that 10% of eligible workers would apply for paid leave in a given year.
“People need this now,” added Stewart, who said the United States is one of the only countries that does not provide paid family leave. “People need to take time off to take care of others and themselves.”
She also said paid family leave would especially benefit lowincome workers and women, as only 53.2% of New Mexico women age 16 and older held jobs over a recent five-year period.
Opt in and opt out
It’s unclear exactly how many of New Mexico’s roughly 44,000 businesses with more than one employee already provide paid family leave.
But the list of employers that do offer such leave includes the University of New Mexico, Netflix and the state of New Mexico, under a 2019 executive order issued by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham.
Zoe Otero-Martinez, the executive director with Family Friendly New Mexico, an organization that helps businesses implement workplace guidelines, described family-friendly policies as an overall good business practice.
“We know paid leave can be adopted by employers of all sizes and industries,” she told the Journal.
Under the proposal pending at the Roundhouse, businesses that already provide paid family leave could opt out of the state program, provided they meet the minimum requirements.
But they could also opt in, and Stewart predicted some businesses would find the state-run program attractive since they would not have to directly pay employees on leave.
A common theme among bill critics, however, is that the time is not right for a paid family leave mandate, with many businesses still feeling the aftershocks of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dreamstyle Remodeling President and CEO Larry Chavez said he advocates for the health and well-being of his employees, while providing paid vacation and paid sick leave in accordance with state law.
But Chavez, whose company employs roughly 225 full-time employees in New Mexico and 900 spread across a handful of other states, said legislators should take into account the costs associated with government mandates.
“It’s important that we are attractive to new businesses or to businesses started by local residents,” he said. “We want to be competitive.”
PEOPLE DO STRESS A LOT AND TO HAVE THAT BENEFIT OF KNOWING ‘OK, THIS IS COVERED AND I’M ABLE TO TAKE THIS TIME OFF IF NEEDS BE,’ IS HUGE.
MACKENZIE ENRIQUEZ COO OF ABQ-BASED MONSTULLY LLC