Family leave program proposed

OLYMPIA – When Selena Allen became pregnant two years ago with her second child, she and her husband tallied up their bills and made a tough decision. She could afford to take 12 days of unpaid maternity leave after the baby was born.

Then that plan fell apart. The child was born a month early, and rushed into neonatal intensive care.

Allen then faced a painful choice: take her time off to be with her tiny newborn in the hospital or go back to work, hope he did all right, and take the time off when he was released.

She chose the latter. Two days after giving birth, the Auburn woman left her son in the hospital and returned to work.

“Those were the hardest two and a half weeks of my life,” she told a legislative committee Monday.

Workers with a sick spouse, ailing parent or ill child shouldn’t be faced with those sorts of choices, some state lawmakers say. And against a chorus of “no’s” from business groups, they’re floating a plan to help.

“Your money or your life. Unfortunately, that is the choice that a lot of Washington families are having to make today,” said Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson, D-Seattle, who’s sponsoring House Bill 1173.

Business groups say the bill is well-intentioned, but would saddle companies with another cost, would make it easier for employees to stay at home without good cause, and would be hard to administer.

Dickerson wants to create a state-run “family leave insurance program” that would pay workers up to $250 a week for up to five weeks when they stay home to care for a family member – or themselves. The proposed law would require companies to let the person return to his or her job or an equivalent position.

The money would come from a 2-cent-per-hour tax on employers, which works out to about $40 a year for a full-time worker. Companies could take half of that out of their employees’ pay.

The money – estimated to total $111 million over the next two years – would go into a state fund that would pay workers who take unpaid time off to care for a family member or themselves.

“This isn’t a get-rich-quick plan,” Allen told lawmakers. “It’s enough to provide basic sustenance when you have a critical need.”

California last year started a similar program. It taxes employees a maximum of $63.53 per year. In exchange, they get $50 to $840 per week when they take up to six weeks off in a year to tend to a new baby, adopted child, a sick family member, or themselves.

In 1993, Congress also passed the federal Family and Medical Leave Act, which allows employees of medium- and large businesses to take up to 12 weeks of leave a year – unpaid – for family and medical reasons. In general, they must be reinstated to their jobs or an equivalent job when they return.

The Washington law, proponents say, would provide a financial safety net for workers who must take the leave.

They also say the change would save businesses money in the long run, by saving them the trouble of recruiting and retraining workers when someone with a family crisis leaves.

“Right now, workers are too often forced to quit when they need to take time off,” said Richard Clark, CEO of Amtech Corp., a Washington company that makes hard-tops for military Humvees.

But some of the state’s most influential business groups oppose the plan, saying they can’t afford another bill. It would be complicated to administer, they say, and unfair to other workers who would often have to pick up the slack for the missing employee, they said.

The new law would also create another way for workers to get paid to stay home, said Cliff Finch, a lobbyist for the trade group Washington Food Industry.

“This bill is less about families than it is about individual disability leave,” he told lawmakers. “More and more workers are choosing to go into disability programs, be it state or federal, instead of working.”

Recent court rulings, he said, have held that the flu or a virus can constitute a “serious medical condition” under such laws.

Employers need flexibility to deal with medical-leave issues on a case-by-case basis, said Carolyn Logue, with the state chapter of the National Federation of Independent Business.

Some 70 percent of the small-business-group’s members, she said, pay their employees when they take medical leave, particularly for family emergencies.

“We feel that this bill is definitely not needed,” she said.

Mark Johnson, a lobbyist for the Washington Retail Association, agreed.

“Employers value good, hard-working employees and will do whatever they can to keep that employee,” he said.