New D.C. Council legislation introduced Tuesday would give workers 16 weeks of paid leave in circumstances ranging from the birth of a child to caring for a dying parent.
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“The pool of contribution is unfairly on the backs of D.C. businesses only”, Wingo says, noting that it would be unprecedented for D.C. businesses to fund benefits for city residents working in Maryland and Virginia. To finance the fund, private employers based in D.C. would be taxed between 0.5% to 1% of every employee’s gross salary.
The paper notes that the plan applies to nearly all workers in the city (including part-time) and is more than double anything on offer in any of the 50 states.
“With this legislation, we once again position D.C.as a national leader on policies that bolster our families, workers, and employers”, Silverman said in a release.
During his State of the Union speech in January, President Barack Obama lamented that millions of Americans do not have paid sick and parental leave. The D.C. Chamber of Commerce objected to the proposal Monday when it sent a letter to the council. Right now, the maximum benefit in the country is six weeks of partial paid leave in New Jersey and California.
That’s to say nothing of benefits for families of dads who take leave; they wind up spending more time with their children long after the period of compensation ends. In May, the D.C. Auditor published a report saying that that law – which was expanded in 2014 to include tipped workers – had “minimal impact on employers”.
Seven of the D.C. Council’s 13 members have co-sponsored Grosso’s bill.
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Silverman and council member David Grosso (I-At Large), who pushed the measure for months behind the scenes, recently attended a symposium led by the Labor Department where the District’s efforts were lauded for helping to “push the needle” on family-leave law. Instead of trying to get legislation through Congress, the administration is offering grants to help create state-level paid family leave plans. He has argued that family leave should not become the domain of the wealthy. “You can’t afford to take that leave”, said Grosso, chairman of the council’s education committee. “And then move through the setup of the regulations, and ultimately get this service out there so we have the real strong support for families in the city that we need”. As a result, many workers are forced to choose between their paycheck or even the security of their jobs and caring for a sick loved one. Like most other council sponsors of the bill, he does not have any children but said he and his mother had to stagger shifts years ago to care for a terminally ill grandmother.
