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When President Clinton signed the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) in 1993, the law was heralded as a steadying force in the work and family balancing act. For the first time, federal law gave workers the right to time off the job to care for a newborn child, a sick family member, or themselves – with continued health benefits, and without fear of a pink slip. The FMLA is not a cure-all, however, and a look at the law’s use (and non-use) reveals some shortcomings. Not only does the law exclude some workers from coverage, others cannot afford to take time off without pay – unpaid leave being all that the law provides. What’s more, it’s those who are in the most need of workplace support who most often find themselves unprotected by the FMLA. Small Business, Little Protection Workers at firms employing fewer than 50 people (including at multiple sites within a 75 mile radius) are not covered by the FMLA. This excludes about 37 million workers from the law’s provisions. An additional 24 million workers are covered by the law, but are not eligible to take leave – in some cases because they have worked for their present employer for less than a year, in others because they work part time (fewer than 1,250 hours in a year). These limits on coverage and eligibility were put in place to protect (in the words of the “findings and purposes” section of the original legislation) “the legitimate interests of employers.” It’s not that workers at firms of fewer than 50 employees don’t have the same family emergencies as workers at larger firms, it’s that small businesses would find the law too burdensome – or so lawmakers feared. Is this fear justified? Surveys commissioned by the U.S. Department of Labor show that among employers now covered by the law, those on the smaller end of the scale (that is, with 50-100 employees) actually have an easier time administering and complying with the law than their larger counterparts. The smaller employers surveyed by the Labor Department were also less likely to report decreases in profit, productivity, and growth than were larger employers. Based on the existing evidence, there’s no reason to believe that the FMLA poses a particular burden for small employers. Who’s In, Who’s Out The gaps in the law’s coverage create a division between FMLA “haves” and FMLA “have nots.” The “have nots” tend to be workers who are disadvantaged in other ways, as well. In particular, workers with the lowest incomes and the least education are the least likely to have access to FMLA leave. While 74 percent of workers with family incomes over $100,000 are entitled to FMLA leave, only 39 percent of workers with incomes under $20,000 work for a covered firm and are eligible for leave. The statistics by educational level are similar: 74 percent of workers with a graduate school education are covered and eligible, compared to just 44 percent of workers with less than a high school education. The workers least likely to be covered by the FMLA are also the least likely to have other workplace supports to fall back on. According to one recent study of America’s working families, those with the lowest incomes are less likely to have paid sick leave, paid vacation leave, or flexible work schedules. These are the workers who would be hardest hit economically by a prolonged illness or family emergency. Even if everyone had equal access to family and medical leave, not everyone is equally able to use it. The fact that FMLA leave is unpaid is a major barrier to its use. According to the surveys commissioned by the Labor Department, during an 18 month period in 1999 and 2000, approximately 2.7 million people needed to take leave but couldn’t afford the unpaid time off. Building on the FMLA While a number of measures to build on the FMLA have been proposed in the U.S. Congress, none have gone anywhere. Congressional inaction has led family leave supporters to focus their efforts on state leave laws. So far in 2001, legislators in 20 states have introduced bills regarding family leave. Most of these have involved providing paid leave for the adoption or birth of a child. No comprehensive paid leave law has yet been passed by a state legislature, and many different approaches to providing and funding such leave have been proposed. When the Clinton administration took steps in 1999 to allow states to use Unemployment Insurance (UI) funds for family leave purposes, a number of states considered extending their UI programs to include new parents. Other states have explored the option of appropriating general fund dollars for direct wage replacement, and still others have studied employee-employer funded programs and partial reimbursement programs funded jointly by the state and employers. In Minnesota, a bill to establish a voluntary paid parental leave program is under consideration. The bill would put in place a $1 million pilot program under which the state would share the cost of wages voluntarily paid by an employer during parental leave. Other states are still conducting studies to see which type of paid leave program is most appropriate, and how much it would cost. The evidence gathered so far suggests that the cost of extending state unemployment insurance programs to include family and medical leave would be modest. In Massachusetts, a bill that would provide unemployment benefits during parental leave would increase total unemployment insurance costs by only 2 percent, according to analysts. To put that figure in perspective, the state’s unemployment trust fund now accrues three times the amount in interest that it would take to add parental leave to the system. Sources: “Family Leave Benefits Campaign Bulletin,” The National Partnership for Women and Families, April 23, 2001. “State Family Leave Benefit Initiatives: Making Family Leave More Affordable,” The National Partnership for Women and Families, March 2001. “Balancing the Needs of Families and Employers,” U.S. Department of Labor, January 2001. Jody Heymann, The
Widening Gap: Why America’s Working Families are in Jeopardy and
What Can Be Done About It (Basic Books, January 2000) |
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Part-Time Workers Employment in Major UAW Industries
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Next: State Medical and Family Leave Initiatives
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