Work-Family Issues

Though we have come a long way, No Limits believes that much more needs to be done to enable American families to meet their work and family obligations and to ensure that women receive equal pay for equal work. Doing so will not only help American families but will strengthen our competitive advantage by helping to maximize the talent and capabilities of the entire American workforce.

Better Leave Policies For American Families

Seventeen years ago, President Clinton signed into law the Family Medical Leave Act, ground-breaking legislation that enabled millions of Americans for the first time to take unpaid – and job-protective – leave to care for a newborn child or bond with a newly adopted or foster child, an immediate family member with a serious health condition that requires the worker’s assistance or for the employee’s own health condition.

But today, millions of Americans simply cannot afford to take a day off from work to take care of some of the most basic health and care giving needs. California and New Jersey have paid family leave insurance programs but the United States as a whole lags far behind almost every industrialized nation on leave issues; fewer than one out of every ten U.S. workers has paid leave to care for newborn or sick children.

Being able to take a few hours from work to visit the doctor or the day off to care for oneself or a sick child is something many of us take for granted. Yet, according to the National Partnership for Women and Families, nearly 57 million working Americans do not have a single day of paid sick leave. That’s nearly half of private sector workers and almost 80 percent of low-wage workers.

The result? According to a recent survey by the Community Service Society, those without paid sick leave were more likely than those with paid sick leave to:

• Go to work sick because they fear losing their pay or their jobs
• Send a sick child to school or day care because they could not take time off from work to care for the child
• Visit the emergency room, even when they had health insurance, because they were unable to take time off from work to receive medical care during normal work hours
• Report that their employer threatened to fire, suspend, write up or otherwise penalize them for wanting to take time off to recover from an illness or care for a sick child

Good leave policies are the right thing to do and the smart thing to do. They are good for American children and families, public health, and can also reduce health care costs with fewer emergency room visits and with less reliance on skilled nursing facilities. And they are good for business, as employee productivity is increased and turnover is reduced.

President Obama's proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2011 establishes a $50 million State Paid Leave Fund that will provide competitive grants to states to launch paid-leave programs, building upon the efforts of some states that have already established such programs. These efforts are critical as more and more Americans are shouldering the burden of providing for their children and caring for an ill or elderly parent at the same time. Legislation has also been introduced promoting various leave efforts. We’ll keep you posted on any developments.

Greater Support for Caregivers

Though it receives little public attention, caregiving for adults, in addition to children, is an issue affecting a large and growing number of American families. According to a comprehensive survey conducted by the National Alliance for Caregiving, in collaboration with the AARP:

• Family caregivers provide the overwhelming majority – more than 80 percent – of long-term care services in the United States, a level of care valued at more than $300 billion a year.
• In the past 12 months, 66 million Americans served as an unpaid family caregiver to an adult or a child.
• The typical provider of care is a middle-aged woman and the typical recipient of care is an elderly woman.
• Caregivers spend on average more than 20 hours a week providing care. Seventeen percent provide care for more than 40 hours a week.
• More than 1.4 million children between the ages of 8 and 18 provide care for an adult relative.
• More than seven in ten caregivers were employed at some time while they were caregiving, and, among them, two-thirds reported arriving at work late or leaving early to handle a caregiving issue. Twenty percent had to take a leave of absence.

Clearly, as the National Alliance noted, unpaid family caregivers “are a critical extension of our health care system. Without their efforts, there would be a shift of recipients into public programs such as Medicaid, and the quality of life and health status of many who need care would decline.”

These facts compelled then-Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, along with Senator John Warner, to introduce in the Senate The Lifespan Respite Care Act, which increased the availability of respite care services for family caregivers and was signed into law in 2006.

In his proposed Fiscal Year 2011 budget, President Obama funds the Administration on Aging’s Caregiver Initiative at $103 million to provide new resources to local agencies that provide critical help to seniors and caregivers. The proposed budget also provides an additional $989 for Head Start and Early Head Start and an additional $1.6 billion for the Child Care and Development Fund, designed to improve the health, safety and outcomes for our children. The increased funding will enable States to provide child care subsidies to 1.6 million children, 235,000 more than would otherwise been served.

Equal Pay For Equal Work

Equal pay for equal work is such a fundamental issue of fairness and, yet, though we are well into the 21st Century, millions of women still do not receive it. Here are the facts:

• Women still earn only 78 cents for every dollar a man makes.
• It’s worse for women of color: African American women earn 68 cents, and Hispanic women just earn 58 cents, for every dollar a man earns.
• Single mothers are squeezed even more: Equal pay could mean their earning rate would increase by 17 percent and their poverty rate would be cut in half.
• If you are a working woman: in the course of your lifetime, unequal pay can cost you up to $2 million.
• Equal Pay Day – this year April 20th – illustrates the gap between the wages of men and women by showing how far into the year a woman must work, on average, to earn as much as a man earned the previous year.

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act

One of our biggest victories last year was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, sponsored by Senator Barbara Mikulski and the first piece of legislation signed by President Obama on January 29, 2009. Named for the woman whose pay discrimination suit was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2007 – on the grounds that she should have filed it within six months of being hired, even though like many employees she could not know her coworkers salaries – the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act restores the right to claim damages for past discrimination.

The Paycheck Fairness Act

Introduced in the Senate by then-Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton before she left the Senate to become Secretary of State, and by Representative Rosa DeLauro in the House of Representatives, the Paycheck Fairness Act would update and strengthen the Equal Pay Act of 1963 by closing loopholes in the Equal Pay Act and barring retaliation against workers who disclose their wages. The bill would also allow women to receive the same remedies for gender-based pay discrimination that are currently available to those subject to discrimination based on race and national origin and would reinstate the collection of gender-based wage data to help monitor progress toward equal pay.

The House of Representatives passed the Paycheck Fairness Act more than a year ago on January 9, 2009. It is now up to the Senate to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act to help make equal pay a reality.

Proposed Budget Promotes Equal Pay

In his Fiscal Year 2011 proposed budget, President Obama called for increased funding for the EEOC and the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division to improve compliance, public education and enforcement of equal pay laws as well as to research and share data on income and job disparities. This is especially important as women make up half all workers and seven out of ten families with children are made up of either two working parents or a single working parent, usually a woman.

This is good news but as with all budget proposals, we have a way to go before this one becomes a reality and is enacted into law. We’ll do our best to keep you informed about key legislative action on this and other budget priorities. And, as always, we encourage you to speak to your congressional representatives about the specific budget priorities that matter most to you.

For more information about the President’s Fiscal Year 2011 Budget, click here.

RESOURCES

Better Leave Policies for American Families

For more information about paid sick leave and to join the National Partnership for Women and Families Paid Sick Days Campaign, click here.

Institute for Women’s Policy Research

Access to and Use of Paid Sick Leave Among Low-Income Families with Children (Urban Institute) (Note – This link goes to the Urban Institute page that sends you to another site – Pediatrics – where the PDF can be downloaded).

Greater Support for Caregivers

Caregiving in the U.S. (National Alliance for Caregiving)

National Families Caregiver Association

Equal Pay for Equal Work

Visit the National Women’s Law Center for more information about equal pay and The Fair Pay Campaign.

National Committee on Pay Equity

Know Your Worth! Use this calculator to figure your worth – and what it costs if you aren’t receiving a fair wage.

Know Your Rights! Here are some tips on how to negotiate your salary to ensure you are paid what you are worth and what to do if you suspect wage discrimination.