Jersey passes landmark paid family leave

No more New Jersey jokes for me, ever. Jersey this week became the third state in the nation to pass paid parental leave legislation and Governor Jon Corzine, a strong supporter of the bill, is expected to sign it any day. As of July 2009, parents in New Jersey will be able take up to six weeks paid leave to care for a newborn, newly adopted child or a seriously ill family member while receiving up to two-thirds of their salary (up to a maximum of $524 weekly). The leave will be funded by a 0.09 percent tax on workers' salaries that would amount to an average of roughly $33 a year.

There are some disquieting oddities in this law. According to the Philadelphia Business Journal,

Under the legislation, workers would have to exhaust maternity and disability leave and would also have to use at least two weeks of sick leave and vacation time prior to taking paid family leave. Workers would also have to give employers prior notice of their intent to take paid family leave and provide a doctor's note. Employers with less than 50 employees would not have to guarantee the jobs of those who take leave would be held.

What if you have no vacation or sick leave? Unlike most of the rest of the world, the U.S. does not require employers to offer paid sick leave, and almost half of private sector employers don’t. Lots of workers don’t get vacation pay either, or get very little. Low-wage workers are least likely to get either kind of leave.

And why a doctor’s note? Just what would the note say? How about: Paid family leave has been found to reduce infant mortality by as much as 20 percent and to make babies more likely to receive regular medical checkups, get immunizations, and be breastfed. I’m not sure most doctors know this. I’ve really had it up to here with our culture’s worship of the authority of doctors.

And of course there are all those people who work for small employers, who under the law wouldn’t have any guarantee that their jobs would be waiting for them when they returned from the leave.
Still and all, it’s great news. The U.S. is taking baby steps to join the rest of the civilized world in supporting parenthood.

Until now, California has been a lone trailblazer, the only state to offer paid leave (since 2004). My own state of Washington passed paid family leave last year, but has been struggling to implement and fund it. See my article at Crosscut.