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. 43,500,000 people provide unpaid care to family members, and six of every ten family caregivers report working at jobs unrelated to their care responsibilities. More than half report working full time. An estimated 36,000,000 working age adults live with a family member who has a disability. Without paid family and medical leave, many workers are unable to take time away from work to care for newborn children, parents and relatives with serious health conditions, 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 17 percent of civilian 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 17 percent of all workers had access to paid family leave in 2017 and it was available to only 5 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. By 2030, one in five United States residents will have reached retirement age, and individuals 65 and older are projected to outnumber those under the age of 18 for the first time in the history of the United States. The number of potential family caregivers for each person age 80 and older will fall from 7:1 in 2010 to fewer than 3:1 by 2050. Additionally, 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 seriously ill or injured older adult relatives could drive down Medicare costs by decreasing recurrences of ailments and re-admittance into hospitals. The implementation of California’s paid family leave insurance program, which has been in effect since 2004, accounted for an 11 percent relative decline in elder nursing home usage. Only half of cancer patients and survivors report having access to paid leave, and only four in ten caregivers of those patients are able to take paid leave to help with completing treatment, managing symptoms and side effects, and caring for their own health. 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 more than half a century. Access to paid leave is even rarer for men, as just 9 percent of private sector workers are employed at worksites that offer paid paternity leave to all male employees. Three out of every four fathers in white-collar jobs took one week or less of leave after their most recent child was born, and nearly 60 percent of low-income fathers reported taking zero weeks of paid time away from work after the birth or adoption of a child. 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, and lower rates of immunization. California’s paid leave program improved child health outcomes, particularly for economically vulnerable children, and improved breastfeeding and vaccination rates. New mothers without sufficient leave experience a higher incidence of physical and mental health concerns, and new mothers with fewer than 12 weeks of leave experience elevated risks of postpartum depression. California’s paid family leave insurance program 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. New Jersey’s paid leave program, which has been in effect since 2009, was strongly associated with improvements in new mothers’ physical health. A gender-inclusive nationwide paid family and medical leave program would address 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. Many men would like to be more involved in caregiving and report greater work-family conflict than ever before. When fathers in two-parent, opposite-sex households take paid leave, their involvement in caregiving and domestic chores increases, supporting equal co-parenting and making it easier for women to return to the workforce. 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, which implemented its program in 2014, men took leave at higher rates in the program’s first year than other State programs’ first year. 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 SNAP benefits and other 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 and implemented by the States of California, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and New York, and recently passed in the District of Columbia, Washington, and Massachusetts, 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, and businesses surveyed in New Jersey and Rhode Island reported having little trouble adjusting to the State’s law. When workers can care for themselves and their loved ones, employers experience positive impacts. In California, where a family leave insurance program has existed for more than a decade, workers in low-wage, high-turnover industries are much more likely to return to their jobs after using the program, and 9 out of 10 businesses report positive or neutral effects on profitability and productivity. High-profile employers are increasingly recognizing the value of providing paid leave in reduced turnover and improved employee morale and productivity, yet access to paid leave remains low across most industries, particularly for low- and middle-income workers. Some of the fastest-growing occupations, such as home health care and service jobs, typically pay low wages and are particularly unlikely to offer paid leave benefits. As of 2018, more than 75 businesses and business leaders have endorsed the need for a strong, inclusive national paid leave policy. Californians have filed nearly 2,810,000 paid family leave claims between the implementation of the State's paid family leave program in 2004 and November 2017. In New Jersey, more than 255,000 claims have been filed over the more than 7 years of the program’s existence, and in Rhode Island, nearly 34,000 claims were filed in the program’s first 3 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 81 percent. Without a national paid leave policy, the United States is missing out on substantial economic activity, which has been estimated at approximately $500,000,000,000 by the Department of Labor, as women in particular are held back from participating in the workforce in equal shares. A national paid family and medical leave program has the support of more than eight in ten voters across demographic and party lines. It is the purpose of this Act— to help working people, including single working parents and workers in dual-earner families, afford to take time away from work to provide care for a family member; 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.