GOP Introduces Worthwhile Paid Work Leave Bill

You’ve probably heard of FMLA—shorthand for the Family and Medical Leave Act. The law gives employees a right to unpaid leave for a serious medical condition of their own, or a close family member. Employees are afforded 12 weeks on a rolling, annual calendar.

House Republican lawmakers have introduced a bill that would upgrade FMLA by providing paid leave—that is, paid time off. The nation’s leading HR society (Society of Human Resource Management), and other traditional employer groups, have drawn the bill.

It has real merits. 

First, employers would not be required to provide paid leave. That is disappointing in some respects but shouldn’t end consideration of the bill.

If an employer chooses to provide paid leave—and many competitive employers already do this— the legislation specifies that employers would give workers between 12 and 20 paid days off annually, depending on the employer’s size and the employee’s tenure.

The law would give companies six flexible work options, such as telecommuting or compressed work scheduling, to offer their workers.

Personally, I like the idea of legislating baseline options that vary across a wide array of industries and work settings.

There must be a catch, you’re saying, if you come to this from a union or progressive perspective.

Yes, and here it is: the law would preempt paid-leave laws in eight states and 32 cities and counties that guarantee workers the right to time off. Also, the bill, in its current form, has few or no enforcement mechanisms.

My sense is that this is a reasonable trade-off—and anyway, there is too much local legislation by hard-line conservatives and hard-line progressives on these matters. 

Illinois, for example, came close to enacting a law that would make it a crime for local officials to enact a law that bars collection of mandatory union dues. 

The Illinois approach—a dumb Republican idea outmatched my a dumber Democratic idea—needs to stop.

This blog is often critical of Republican lawmakers.

Not this time. This is a pretty neat bill—with lots of common sense principles, and a modest but important use of government regulation.

Now, let’s have hearings on the bills. Let’s tweak it without distorting it. (My tweak? Make the paid-leave options mandatory for employers with over 500 employees.)

And let’s get Democrats to be brave and support, or at least consider, this bill.