Last Tuesday President Obama called on the United States Congress to reform paid parental leave and sick leave laws to make work fairer and more flexible for all American parents.
He pointed out that America is the only advanced nation on earth with no guarantee of sick leave or maternity leave for its workers, and said it is time for Congress to pass legislation to fix this problem.
“It’s time we stop treating child care as a side issue, or a women’s issue, and treat it like the national economic priority that it is for all of us. It’s often an economic necessity today for both parents in a household to work,” he said during his State of the Union address.
“Forty-three million workers have no paid sick leave. Forty-three million. Think about that. And that forces too many parents to make the gut-wrenching choice between a paycheck and a sick kid at home. So I’ll be taking new action to help states adopt paid leave laws of their own.”
This seems pretty difficult to disagree with, right? Surely, you might think, there would be broad consensus that in a fully developed democracy it’s appropriate to provide sick leave and parental leave. Apparently not.
Although Obama’s State of the Union speech was full of promise and hope about fairer working conditions for parents, his colleagues in Congress are making it as difficult as possible for him to realise these goals.
Obama has urged the Republican-controlled Congress to pass a bill called the Healthy Families Act as a first step towards realising his vision. The legislation would allow all American workers seven days of paid sick leave per year. Unfortunately, many GOP representatives have signaled they will not support the legislation.
While Obama is hamstrung by this Republican Congress when it comes to national legislation, he has slightly more control over the infrastructure for employees of the US government.
He has announced he will sign a Presidential Memorandum ensuring that federal employees are offered a full six weeks’ paid leave when a new child arrives. This is, however, limited to those men and women employed by the executive branch of the government, as the US Constitution prohibits him from determining conditions of work for the congressional branch.
This would be remedied if the US Congress were to pass legislation introduced by House Democracts this week called the Federal Employees Paid Parental Leave Act, which would provide six week’s paid leave for all federal employees with new children. Again, however, the passage of the bill through the House looks unlikely due to Republican pushback.
So while Obama has clearly demonstrated his commitment to the vision he outlined in the State of the Union, he cannot implement it alone. He needs the support of his parliamentary colleagues onboth sides of the aisle to make it happen. So why are so many of them so reticent to embrace these reforms?
As the New Yorker aptly pointed out, this is a group of (mostly) men who each have 33 weeks’ paid leave per year refusing to pass a law allowing other American workers to share in just six of those weeks. Does that seem fair?
Seeing a powerful global leader call for better paid sick and parental leave is very encouraging, and we hope that this president is successful in implementing his bold vision for America during his final two years in office. But the broader problem remains: Why can the majority of our representatives still not recognise the economic and societal imperative of supporting parents in their return to the workforce?