Healthy Families and People Are Part of Main Street Businesses’ Bottom Line

Principles on Paid Family and Medical Leave

Business owners and employees alike experience the need for time to recover from a serious illness, care for a sick loved one, or welcome a new child. Protecting such time is good for business. It strengthens talent recruitment and retention, boosts employee morale and loyalty, and increases productivity. Small businesses lack the scale and capital to offer and administer and/or afford paid leave. We need a national paid family and medical leave social insurance program. We need paid leave for all.

 
 
 
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Coverage is inclusive of all businesses, families and individuals and provides comprehensive benefits to meet the needs of today’s families.

  1. Equal, Universal Access. All business sizes and configurations should be covered, and all owners, self-employed people and employees (whether part-time, full-time or seasonal) covered, with no carve outs or opt-outs. 

  2. Comprehensive. Parental, family, and serious personal medical needs covered without gender distinction. Minimum 12 weeks leave.

  3. Inclusive, simple family definition to meet the needs of today’s workforce.

 
 
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Costs are responsibly shared to make the program affordable for businesses of all sizes, sustainable to fund and affordable to use by workers of all incomes.

  1. Affordable to Fund. Cost shared between employers and employees.

  2. Affordable to Use. Maintain spending power of leave beneficiaries through progressive wage replacement with up to full replacement for lower-wage workers.

  3. Public Social Insurance Funding. The program should use a social insurance model, spreading costs across all businesses, business types, and income level of employees  and include a dedicated funding stream (that does not harm other essential programs).

 
 
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Administration is an efficient public program with robust outreach, support and protection to provide stability to businesses and employees.

  1. Efficient, Public Administration of the federal program to maximize simplicity and ensure funding is applied to benefits, not third-party profit.

  2. Solution-Oriented Support and Protection. Extensive outreach and technical assistance for businesses to launch and address issues such as extended employee absence; stability and predictability for employees as they return.

  3. Streamlined Implementation. Focus on ease of implementation for small businesses.

  4. Set a Benefits Floor. Federal program sets benefit floor, not ceiling. States and businesses can enhance benefits set by federal standards.