Evaluating Family and Medical Leave Insurance for Washington State

The economic gains of paid leave are a key benefit to working families, but paid family leave also impacts quality of care. When workers on leave are ensured some level of wage replacement, they can better focus their attention on loved ones. People of all ages have better health and life outcomes when loved ones are present and active in their care.

For children, the availability of nurturing caregivers at the start matters for healthy development in the long-term. When children are sick at home, they need their parents to provide care, give medications and monitor their condition. In outpatient or hospital care, recovery is faster when parents are at their side and involved in follow-up care planning.  For adults, morbidity and mortality is affected by social engagement, and the elderly have better disease and physical health outcomes when loved ones participate in their care.

Caregivers who take paid leave report more positive effects on their ability to provide care, compared with those who do not receive wage replacements. In a survey of California workers who accessed paid family leave, 82% reported that bonding leave “had a positive effect on their ability to care” for a new child. Positive effects were even greater for workers in low-wage jobs – 91% reported positive effects on ability to care for a child, versus 71% of those who did not use the state’s program for leave.

While new mothers continue to file the majority of bonding claims in the two states with universal paid family leave programs, the programs have been shown to increase the proportion of claims filed by new fathers. In California, the percentage of bonding claims filed by men increased from 17% in 2004-05, when the program was implemented, to 26% in 2009-10. Many managers have also reported increases in duration of leave taken by new dads.  On average, the likelihood of a new father taking paid leave increased from 61% in 2004 to 86% in 2009.

For children, the benefits of paternity leave last beyond infancy. Researchers found that men who take family leave are more likely to be involved with their children in later months. For example, men who take more than two weeks of leave after the birth of a child are more likely to participate in caregiving activities nine months later.

Evaluating Family and Medical Leave Insurance for Washington State

As women’s participation in the workforce has increased, families have become more dependent on women’s earnings – particularly since the Great Recession left significantly more men without jobs. Yet, women continue to take home less than their male counterparts across industries, age ranges and education levels. According to research by the Center for American Progress, a typical Washington woman earns $524,000 less than her male counterpart over a 40-year career.

Although a number of factors contribute to the earnings gap, many women experience what is known as the “motherhood penalty” – women with children have more difficulty getting hired and are more likely to be offered lower pay than other women and men with equivalent qualifications.

Notably, disparities in pay begin to increase as women reach child-bearing age. As they move into sandwich years, when they are caring for children and elders at the same time, the earnings gap continues to widen because women are less likely to receive promotions and accompanying pay raises.

Childbirth and family care

For women working full-time, paid sick and vacation leave have become more available for situations when a few days of leave is needed. However, sick and vacation leave are usually short-term and insufficient for serious health or family issues.

Data from the U.S. Census Bureau show that more than half of first-time mothers used some form of paid leave after the birth of their first child between 2006 and 2008. More than a third of these women used a combination of leave, including paid vacation and sick days to spend time recovering from childbirth and caring for their newborns. Further, data show that while fewer women are quitting their jobs to care for newborns, more women are taking unpaid leave after giving birth and slightly more are being let go from their jobs.

Photo courtesy of Marianne Bullock

From NPR:

The past week’s political firestorm in the presidential race focused on stay-at-home moms, but two-thirds of women with young children now work. Nearly half are their family’s primary breadwinner. What some feel is being lost in the political debate are the challenges they face in the workplace.

“We unfortunately have a number of workplaces that operate as if workers are still men, with wives at home full-time,” says Ellen Bravo, who heads Family Values at Work, a coalition that promotes paid-leave programs.

“So many moms are dying to be able to stay home at the most important moments — namely, when they give birth, and when their kid is sick — and aren’t allowed to do so,” she says.

That was the case for Marianne Bullock a few years ago, when her 18-month-old had a stomach virus.

“It was the first time that my daughter had really been sick,” she says. “She was not nursing, and she was lethargic.”

Bullock was a personal care assistant in Massachusetts; that day, she called in sick. The next day, she had to take her daughter to the hospital, where she was hydrated. The third morning, her daughter seemed better and Bullock got ready to leave for work.

“As I was walking out the door, she vomited again,” Bullock says. “And I was like, ‘I just have to take her to the hospital.’ And so I called in — and when I called in, the care manager that I spoke to said, ‘You just might as well not come back.’ “

Bullock was fired. She says the manager actually told her they’d rather hire someone without a child…

Read the full story from NPR: Working Moms’ Challenges: Paid Leave, Child Care

Public comment will be taken until Monday, April 30, 2012. Your input will be used to shape the final language of the Rules, which define terms used in the ordinance, and to clarify how SOCR will conduct enforcement.

Send comments via e-mail to rulecomment@seattle.gov, give input online at http://www.seattle.gov/civilrights/comment.htm, or submit them in writing to:

Seattle Office for Civil Rights
810 Third Ave., Suite 750
Seattle, WA  98104-1627
Attn:  Paid Sick/Safe Time Rule Comment

Two community meetings have been scheduled to take comments on the draft Rules. Both meetings are free and open to the public.

• Thursday, April 12, 8:30-10:30 am.
  Bertha Knight Landes Room, Seattle City Hall, 600 4^th Avenue

• Tuesday, April 17, 3-5 pm.
  Treehouse, 2100 24^th Ave. S. Room A

For more information about the meetings, to request language interpretation or an accommodation for a disability, contact Thai Nguyen at 206-684-4514 or thai.nguyen@seattle.gov.

If you have general questions about the Ordinance or about the materials available online, please contact Elliott.bronstein@seattle.gov or 206-684-4507.

The percentage of American mothers who breastfeed their babies has risen over the past decade, but it remains far below the rate public health officials would like to see. Newly published research provides one possible reason why.

It turns out all that healthy, nutritious milk comes at a surprisingly high cost.

A study of 1,313 American women who gave birth between 1980 and 1993 finds those who breastfed for six months or more suffered “more severe and more prolonged earnings losses” than mothers who breastfed for a shorter amount of time, or not at all.

“Our results suggest that breastfeeding, at least for six months or longer, is not free in an economic sense,” write sociologists Phyllis Rippeyoung and Mary Noonan. Their findings are published in the American Sociological Review.

According to the most recent government statistics, 74.6 percent of mothers report they breastfed their babies. But only 44.3 percent were still breastfeeding at six months, and 23.8 percent at one year, the minimum cutoff age recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

In an attempt to find out why, Rippeyoung and Noonan studied data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, an annual survey of a large group of Americans born between 1957 and 1964. They specifically looked at how childbirth and subsequent breast feeding impacted a woman’s earnings over the following years.

“We found that after childbirth, short-duration breastfeeders (those who stopped before the baby was 6 months old) and formula-feeders experienced similar earnings penalties,” the researchers write. “By contrast, women who breastfed for long durations experienced a much steeper decline in earned income over the first five years of their children’s lives.”

The cause of this gap is clear enough: “Long-duration breastfeeders are more likely to be non-employed in the years following childbirth, and they work fewer hours when they are employed.”

Learn why – and what can be done – in Miller-McCune »

Ellen Bravo

Paid sick days are good for our economy, according to numerous studies by seasoned economists. That’s why Americans in cities and states across the country from all parts of the political spectrum support this policy.

The same policy is under fierce attack by big corporate lobbyists, whose job it is to protect the top 1% of society – folks who, of course, already have paid sick days. In their attempts to scare small business owners and the public, the corporate lobbyists have created a whole new math system to justify their position.

The abra-ca-dabra arithmetic practiced by the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB), one of the Big Six corporate lobbies, is simply about pulling numbers out of a hat and daring to call it economics.

The NFIB is currently peddling a so-called “study” in Massachusetts, proclaiming that proposed legislation allowing workers to earn paid sick days in that state would cost huge amounts and be a disaster for small business. Legitimate research estimates the legislation would save businesses in that state upwards of $348 million and save hospital emergency rooms another $22.7 million, including $13.4 million in taxpayer-funded public health savings.

As economists have pointed out about a similar tome produced in Philadelphia, the NFIB document rests on incorrect facts and flawed assumptions. Here are a few examples:

• False Assumption #1: The NFIB assumes each employee who gains paid sick days will use every day provided to them. The document’s own footnote acknowledges that the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Center for Disease Control estimate much smaller numbers of usage – 3 days (BLS) or 3.8 (CDC). Also, in a random sample of employees in San Francisco, which has had similar requirements in place since 2007, employees used a median of 3 days per year. Researchers say workers tend to view the time as an insurance policy, saving the days they earn for when they may need them most.

• False Assumption #2: The NFIB includes in additional wages the cost of health insurance – but those costs are fixed and do not vary with work hours. They will be unaffected by new PSD coverage.

• Convenient Oversight: Perhaps most outrageous is the refusal of the NFIB to look at the other side of the equation – how much employers save from increased productivity, lower absenteeism when co-workers don’t catch the sick employee’s germs, reduced turnover when workers aren’t fired for following a doctor’s orders. A 2009 study by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research projects s a $348 million annual benefit to Massachusetts employers if the earned paid sick days law were instituted.

Who does the NFIB really work for? While the group claims to represent Mom and Pop shops, it has never lobbied on behalf of bills small businesses really need – such as halting the expansion of big-box competitors that drive out Main Street businesses, or curbing the many tax policies that local activists say give national retailers an unfair advantage over independent small companies.

In fact, the NFIB is underwritten by far-right groups like Karl Rove’s American Crossroads. According to the Wall Street Journal, American Crossroads gave the NFIB a hefty $3.7 million before the 2010 election – money Rove’s group considered “well spent.”

If the NFIB cared about the economy and small businesses, they’d have to acknowledge that job retention policies like paid sick days help reduce unemployment and strengthen the economy. They’d recognize that jobs are lost when worker do NOT have paid sick days, as shown by a report from the National Opinion Research Center, which finds that 23% of workers are fired or threatened with being fired for taking time to care for personal or family illness.

And they’d admit that in San Francisco, which last year was named one of the best cities in the world to do business by PricewaterhouseCoopers, more than two in three businesses support the local law and six in seven report no negative impact on profitability.

You can call the latest output from the NFIB many things – distortions, misinformation, hocus pocus.

What you can’t call it is a study.

In these tough economic times, no one should have to lose income — or worse, lose their job — because they get sick, but this is just what happens all the time. Paid sick days is a commonsense measure that will help get our economy moving again by making sure hardworking men and women can hold onto their jobs, support their families and have money to spend to sustain local businesses.

Business owners across Massachusetts support paid sick days because it’s a good policy for their workers, their customers and their bottom lines. The NFIB is another corporate lobby that continues to show it is out of touch with business and the economy.

~by Ellen Bravo, cross-posted from the Family Values at Work Coalition

Have you heard about the highly contagious Koala flu that turns people into horrifying, albeit adorable, zombie marsupials who subsist only on human thigh meat and eucalyptus leaves?

No, you haven’t, because it hasn’t happened — yet. When it does, we’re probably all going to get it because of annoying co-workers who insist on coming to the office when they’re sick.

Yep, humanity will meet its end thanks to Marge down in accounts receivable, who figured, despite the bad fever and hunger for human flesh, she’d suck it up and come to work.

That apocalyptic scenario might be slightly exaggerated, but it gets to the heart of a recent question from a reader who has had it with the socialist redistribution of germs: What is it about the modern-day work environment that encourages disease-carrying co-workers to come in and spread their viruses around the office park?

Turns out there are a couple things at play here.

Read more from I Just Work Here »

Report: The Impact of Workplace Policies and Other Social Factors...During the 2009 H1N1 Pandemic

According to a recent report published by the National Institutes of Health:

the absence of certain workplace policies, such as paid sick leave, confers a population-attributable risk of 5 million additional cases of ILI in the general population and 1.2 million cases among Hispanics. Federal mandates for sick leave could have significant health impacts by reducing morbidity from ILI, especially in Hispanics.

Report: Paid Sick Days and Health: Cost Savings from Reduced Emergency Department Visits

What’s more, access to paid sick days could save up to $1 billion in medical costs every year, according to a report from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research(IWPR):

This includes $500 million in taxpayer-funded public health care programs for children, elders, and low-income Americans. Currently, more than 44 million American workers do not have access to paid sick days, and more are unable to use time off to take care of sick children or other family members.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, c. 1933

I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

The Mackinac Center for Public Policy – a corporate-backed think tank based in Michigan that calls climate studies a “pseudoscience”, opposes the minimum wage, and argues against state support for more affordable college tuition – has attacked EOI.

Why? Because our research determined that when local child care workers collectively bargained for access to classes and training, it measurably improved their knowledge and skills, and supported their work caring for children. And without collective bargaining, it is highly unlikely these opportunities would have been available to them.

(Judging from the tone of the post, Mackinac apparently thinks preventing the spread of disease and promoting strong family bonds – via minimum standards for paid sick days and paid family leave – are also bad ideas. But I digress.)

Mackinac doesn’t actually dispute EOI’s research findings. That’s likely for two reasons:

• They can’t.

• It’s not really the training that gets under their skin. It’s the fact that these workers organized themselves, and in the process made things a little better for themselves and the kids in their care. And you just can’t have that when you’ve got it in for collective bargaining as a matter of ideology.

EOI is proud to have landed on Mackinac’s little hit list, along with 17 other organizations including: Daily Kos, Alliance for Retired Americans, Jobs With Justice, and Change.org.

And if you’d like EOI to end up on more lists like Mackinac’s, please support our work – we promise to do our darndest!

Download the full report: Paid Sick Days: Healthy, responsible prevention for Washington

Paid time off from work to recover from illness, care for a sick child, or see a doctor is a prerequisite for healthy workers and businesses, public health, family economic security, and even children’s success in school. Yet four in ten workers get no paid sick leave – including many restaurant, grocery, and health care workers who are on the front lines of food safety and public health.

Adopting such a standard in Washington would help to prevent the spread of disease in our schools, restaurants and places of business, protecting public and community health throughout the state. Further, paid sick leave is an essential building block for ensuring economic stability for all workers and their families.

The years since the Great Recession began have left many struggling to stay afloat as unemployment and reductions in work hours have wreaked havoc on family budgets. These difficult economic times highlight the importance of workplace benefits, including paid sick leave, in protecting individual and family economic security.

One million jobs in Washington have no paid sick leave

An estimated 1 million of Washington’s 2.8 million jobs do not offer paid sick leave, including nearly 170,000 in accommodation and food service, 167,000 in retail, and close to 93,000 in health services.  People who work part time frequently do not qualify for paid leave and other benefits that are provided to full-time employees. These workers have significantly less access to paid sick days.

Risks to public health

Lack of paid sick leave contributed to the spread of H1N1 in 2009 and 2010, both in the workplace and in schools. Of the approximately 26 million employed Americans infected at the height of the pandemic from September through November 2009, only 18 million took time off from work. Sick workers are estimated to have infected 7 million of their co-workers.

Foodborne illness also has a major impact on health and the economy. According to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), every year one out of six Americans gets sick from food, resulting in 125,000 hospitalizations and 3,000 deaths.  About 20% of cases can be traced to an ill food worker.

In Washington, all food service workers are prohibited from working around unpackaged food or beverages if they have symptoms of gastrointestinal disease or have been diagnosed with a disease that can be transmitted through food.  However, since most restaurants do not offer paid sick time, ill employees often must choose between taking unpaid leave or going to work sick.

Impact on children’s health and education

Caring for a sick child or taking a child to see a health care provider during regular business hours is a significant problem without sick leave. A parent’s lack of paid sick leave can have a negative impact on the child’s health and school performance.

Studies show children recover more quickly from illness with a parent present.  But as workers’ hours have been cut, many are now ineligible to receive workplace benefits – making it particularly challenging for employees to take time off from work when they need to recuperate or care for a sick child.

For 70% of school-age children and 60% of preschoolers in Washington, all parents in the family are in the work force.  Rather than suffer loss of income, many employees feel their only option is to send a sick child to school or go to work while sick themselves. Older children are sometimes kept home from school to care for younger siblings when parents are not able to take time off from work, affecting the older child’s educational outcomes.

Children in families with lower incomes are much less likely to have a parent with access to sick leave than higher income children. A study of employed parents based on 2003 and 2004 data found that just 36.3% of children in families with incomes below 200% of the federal poverty level had a parent with access to paid sick leave, compared to 80.9% of higher income children.

Employers and paid sick leave

Policies that support work/life balance in general and flexible sick leave in particular result in better retention and measurable declines in employee turnover in all types of businesses.  Multiple studies have found that providing paid sick leave results in higher morale and productivity, less absenteeism, and lower rates of turnover.

Turnover is particularly costly for businesses. Estimates of the direct cost of losing and replacing an employee range from 25% to 50% of annual pay for hourly workers, and much more for highly skilled employees.  Many employers have long recognized that providing good benefits is essential to attracting and retaining good employees. Providing paid sick leave that is available for the care of sick family members has been shown to increase firm profits.

Paid sick leave policies around the country

Minimum standards of paid sick days have been adopted in three U.S. cities, including Seattle, where legislation was enacted in September 2011. San Francisco’s paid sick days ordinance has been in place the longest, since February 2007. Connecticut recently passed the first statewide paid sick leave law, and legislation is under consideration in other areas across the country.  Other cities and states that are taking legislation into consideration include New York City, Massachusetts, and California.

In San Francisco, despite misgivings by some that the ordinance would add costs to employers and therefore reduce the number of jobs, the data show that the job market there has compared favorably to the surrounding counties and the state of California as a whole since the sick days law went into effect in 2007.

Conclusion

Lack of access to paid sick leave is a serious issue that affects the health and well-being of everyone who lives in, works in, or visits Washington. Without access to paid leave, workers in restaurants, grocery stores, daycares, health facilities and offices throughout the state make the decision whether to go to work or send their child to school sick – or lose a day’s pay.

Absent a law requiring the provision of paid sick leave, the majority of employers in restaurants and a portion of firms spread across all industries will continue not offering employees sick days, or significantly limiting access. Workers earning lower wages and their children are most directly affected by current practices, but the health and economic vitality of the whole community is negatively affected.

Replicable models of successful paid sick day ordinances are available from other areas. Utilizing these successful models from around the country, Washington can ensure a healthy and prosperous environment as we move out of the recession.

[Download the full report: Paid Sick Days - Healthy, responsible prevention for Washington]