Sec. 2. Findings and purpose
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Congress finds the following: In more than two-thirds of families with children, all adults in the household work. Six in ten family caregivers report working at jobs unrelated to their care responsibilities and more than half report working full time. Without paid family and medical leave, many workers are unable to take time away from work to care for newborn children, ill or aging parents and relatives, or themselves. Both women and men need to be able to take time off work to participate in the care of their children, in the care of seriously ill family members, and to address their own serious health conditions.
Yet, a mere 14 percent of workers in the United States have access to paid family leave through their employers, and fewer than 40 percent have access to short-term disability insurance provided by their employer to use for their own illnesses. Many workers cannot afford to take unpaid time off work to provide care. According to the Department of Labor, nearly half of workers who qualified for leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993
(FMLA)in 2011 were unable to take the leave because they could not afford to take time off without pay. Six in ten workers who took partially paid or unpaid leave reported difficulty making ends meet; half of these workers were forced to cut their leaves short due to financial constraints. Only 14 percent of all workers had access to paid family leave in 2016 and it was available to only 4 percent of people working in the lowest paying jobs. Workers who lack paid family and medical leave face lost wages or even job loss when they miss work because of their own illness or to care for an ill child or parent. In this way, access to paid family and medical leave plays a critical role in families’ efforts to maintain employment and economic security. Caregiving has a high value but also comes at a high cost for family caregivers. Working families in the United States lose an estimated $20,600,000,000 in wages each year due to lack of access to paid family and medical leave. The estimated value of unpaid family care provided in 2013 was $470,000,000,000. Family caregivers face financial, physical and emotional hardships, and in many cases their careers, incomes, and retirement security suffer because of their family responsibilities. The average worker age 50 and older who leaves the workforce to care for an elderly parent loses more than $300,000 in earnings and retirement income. Working caregivers should not have to risk their family’s economic security to fulfill their caregiving obligations. The population aged 65 and over is expected to double over the next few decades. The number of people with chronic conditions is expected to reach nearly 160,000,000 by 2020. Many of these individuals will at some point require family care, and for older workers still in the workforce, many will need time off at some point to address serious health conditions. Ensuring working family caregivers have paid family leave to care for ailing elders could drive down Medicare costs by decreasing recurrences of ailments and re-admittance into hospitals. Many workers are forced to quickly return to work after the birth or arrival of a child because they have no access to paid family and medical leave. Only half of new mothers take paid leave of any duration after the birth of their first child, and among women with less than a high school education the figure is less than 20 percent—a rate that has not changed in half a century. When new mothers have no choice but to return to work without taking leave, children can experience a variety of negative outcomes including higher rates of infant mortality, lower rates of breastfeeding, lower rates of immunization, and a higher incidence of maternal physical and mental health concerns. California’s paid family leave insurance program, which has been in effect since 2004, has increased the number of weeks of leave that women take after childbirth, with larger effects among women in jobs that do not provide paid leave. A nationwide paid family and medical leave program would address the persistent sex discrimination in the utilization of leave benefits and reduce the disparity between women and men regarding who takes time off from work to fulfill caregiving duties. This disparity is driven in part by the fact that men continue to be paid more than women, and, as a result, it often makes more economic sense for women in two-parent families to take unpaid leave and forgo their lower salary. Many men would like to be more involved in caregiving and report greater work-family conflict than ever before. In California, men’s use of the State’s paid family leave insurance program to care for a new child has more than doubled since the program’s implementation. In Rhode Island, the most recent State to implement a State paid leave program, men took leave at higher rates in the program’s first year than other State programs’ first year. High-profile companies are increasingly recognizing the importance of providing paid leave to their workers, regardless of gender, and updating their leave policies to reflect the reality that both men and women need paid leave. Paid family and medical leave promotes families’ financial security and independence, increases worker retention, and promotes savings for taxpayers. Women who take paid leave after a child’s birth are more likely to be in the labor force in the 9 to 12 months after a child’s birth and to earn higher wages in the year following their child’s birth. Both men and women who take paid leave after a child’s birth are less likely to receive food stamps and public assistance in the year following a child’s birth. Without paid medical leave, workers who are ill or injured may return to work before being fully recovered, thus making them susceptible to a relapse or recurrence, and potentially placing additional burdens on the health care system. When a job requires physical stamina or ability, individuals who return to work too early may put themselves or others in jeopardy. A social insurance model of providing paid family leave pioneered by the States of California, New Jersey, and Rhode Island has worked well for workers, their families, and employers. The overwhelming majority of California employers report that the State's program had a positive or neutral effect on their business. When workers can care for themselves and their loved ones, employers experience positive impacts. According to the Department of Labor’s 2012 survey on the FMLA, more than four times as many worksites covered by the FMLA reported positive effects on employee productivity, absenteeism, turnover, career advancement and morale, as well as the business’ profitability, as reported negative effects. Californians have filed more than 2,100,000 claims to leave to care for a family member or bond with a new child over more than a decade. In New Jersey, more than 217,000 claims have been filed over the more than 6 years of the program’s existence, and in Rhode Island, nearly 13,000 claims were filed in the programs first two years. These claims represent valuable care for new children and seriously ill loved ones. Social Security is the Nation’s primary social insurance system, with the most complete record of workers' earnings history. It provides retirement assistance and disability benefits currently and, since its creation in 1934, the programs the Social Security Administration administers have been updated multiple times to reflect the changing needs of the population, families and the workforce. The system needs to be changed again now—with appropriate investments to meet the agency’s needs—to reflect today’s realities. Researchers at Brandeis University estimate that, following enactment of this Act, the share of families falling into financial hardship (earnings below 200 percent of the Federal poverty line) as a result of taking 12 weeks of unpaid leave would be reduced by more than three-fourths. It is the purpose of this Act— to help working families, including single working parents and dual-earner families, afford to take time away from work to provide care for a family member and be good workers; to provide workers with a reasonable level of wage replacement during time away from work for a serious health condition, for the birth or adoption of a child, for the care of a child, spouse, or parent who has a serious health condition, for the care of an injured servicemember, or for qualifying exigencies arising from the deployment of a servicemember; to address sex discrimination, promote the goal of equal employment opportunity for women and men, and to provide relief when employers violate the law; and to accomplish the purposes described in paragraphs (1), (2), and
(3)in a manner that accommodates the legitimate interests of employers.