The Family-Unfriendly Administration
Bush
Targets A Paid Family Leave Policy
by
Elizabeth Sherman
Dissident Voice
February 23, 2003
Count
on the compassionate conservative George W. Bush from the family values party
to strangle an important family-friendly policy. In this case, the Bush
administration seeks to kill a nascent initiative permitting states to use
their unemployment-insurance funds to support paid family leave. The Department
of Labor recently announced plans to eliminate regulations giving states the
flexibility to tap unemployment insurance as a source of financing for paid
family leave.
Such programs -- designed to
help parents on leave from work after the birth or adoption of a child -- have
found increasing favor among policy-makers. States have been pressured in
recent years to correct the biggest failing of the Family and Medical Leave
Act: namely, the absence of any wage replacement for employees taking parental
leave. As a result, new parents must either decline family leave, or take it
despite the enormous financial burdens it will entail.
Bush's "...policy
efforts reveal far greater devotion to cold conservatism than compassion."
Polls show that more than 75
percent of the public support expansion of state unemployment insurance to
cover reasonable family leave costs. And although not one has yet passed a plan
into law, some 16 states were in the process of initiating an unemployment
insurance-funded paid family leave program.
The Birth and Adoption
Unemployment Compensation regulations of 2000 were designed to expand an
anachronistic system established in 1935, based on the premise that male
workers are the sole support of their families. Fast forward to the 21st
century, where most families rely on two wage-earners to meet the high costs of
housing, health care and general expenses. The unemployment-insurance system
has simply failed to keep pace with the needs of today’s workforce, which has
seen a huge increase in the numbers of women and part-time workers.
The intent of the
unemployment-insurance system originally was to help maintain the connection of
employees to the workforce, a goal that that paid family leave clearly
fulfills.
Furthermore, paid leave is a
family-friendly policy that recognizes the staggering burdens that so many
Americans face in their efforts to provide for their loved ones and maintain a
decent standard of living. Given the economic sacrifices of taking unpaid leave
following the birth or adoption of a child, it’s little wonder that the numbers
of households with dependent children has declined dramatically from 45 percent
in 1970 to 33 percent today. Absent realistic and workable family policies like
paid leave, the United States is seeing that more couples are postponing having
children, or foregoing parenthood altogether.
Under the current
regulations of 2000, states can determine whether to use their unemployment
funds for paid family leave, or not. Depriving the states of a needed policy
option undermines their powers and exposes the intent of the government’s
current labor policy: to weaken the rights and resources available to working
families.
There’s nothing in federal
budgetary constraints requiring the elimination of a vital lifeline for new
parents. Many states know a necessary social policy reform when they see one.
And limiting the ability of states to expand unemployment compensation to cover
paid family leave programs is a cynical attempt by the Department of Labor to
squelch the reform impulse.
The Bush administration
talks a good line on family values, but when it comes to serving the basic
emotional, physical and financial needs of young families, their policy efforts
reveal far greater devotion to cold conservatism than compassion.
Dr. Elizabeth Sherman is a fellow at the
Center for Public Leadership at the Kennedy School of Government, at Harvard
University. This article first appeared in TomPaine.com (www.tompaine.com)