Pursuing Paid Leave in the United States

By: Maddie Ecker

December 7, 2015
WASHINGTON - Charlotte Brock is a Marine Corps veteran and single mom who has
come face-to-face with the reality of having to chose between her child and her career.
In 2010 I got pregnant and found out that my company didnt have any paid maternity
leave, Brock, 36, said. They were small, fewer than 30 people, so they didnt have to
give me unpaid leave but they did. I guess in that way, they were generous but I couldnt
take 3 months unpaid and I didnt want to leave my baby for 10 hours at a time in
somebody elses care when he was that young. So, I worked up until I went into labor. I
was lucky he was born on the first of the month, which meant that I had health insurance
for the rest of the month. These are the things that American women have to think about.
Without a source of income and the cost of downtown D.C. childcare totaling around
$2,000 a month, Brock decided to leave the city and move in with her parents in Canada.
I think, for companys bottom lines it seems like theyre spending more to pay women
while theyre on leave but what theyre also doing is retaining their valuable employees,
Brock said. I mean, my company would have kept me, the work force would have kept
me, Washington D.C. would have kept me in the city consuming and paying taxes.
Instead, everybody lost me as a worker and as a consumer because I had to quit my job.
On every level, its really important that we pass paid parental leave nationally.
The United States is the only economically advanced nation that does not have provisions
for sick or family paid leave. One major action that the U.S. Department of Labor has
taken in terms of supplementing its working class with time off due to illness or
pregnancy is the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). Signed into law in 1993, the
FMLA gives eligible employees of covered employers, which is under 50% of workers,
unpaid, job-protected leave for family and medical issues. However, many people cannot
afford to take it.

Organizations such as D.C. Paid Family Leave and MomsRising have been key
contributors in organizing the paid leave movement.
Joanna Blotner, 30, is the campaign manager for D.C. Paid Family Leave, an
organization that aims to pass legislation that would give the residents of Washington
D.C. 16 weeks of paid personal or medical family leave. Last year, the D.C. City Council
passed a bill that gave D.C. government employees eight weeks of paid family leave.
Blotner and the supporters of paid family leave are pushing for more.
The program right now sets up for 16 weeks of paid and medical leave, which is a lot
longer on the family leave side compared to California, Rhode Island and New Jersey
that have these programs but those states all offer 52, 30 and 26 weeks of paid medical
leave, Blotner said. For my friends who have had cancer, 16 weeks is not nearly long
enough but its much better than six weeks, much better than 12 weeks, which is the
federal standard for unpaid leave. We want a program that really meets the needs when
those serious conditions come up and a program that is affordable for people.On Dec. 2,
D.C. City Council held a council meeting to discuss the proposed 16 week plan.
Prominent D.C. businesses leaders, such as Chris Coleman, dismissed the plan, saying
that it was anti-employment and anti-jobs.
In California, Rhode Island and New Jersey employees are only able to earn up to 55
percent of their weekly pay. The D.C. Council proposal would offer workers 100 percent
of their pay while taking time off.
Proponents of this bill said that some form of paid leave was necessary to provide for
D.C. residents facing a crisis. According to the Daily Caller, Council Member Elissa
Silverman was in favor of the plan. For residents that are facing these end-of-lives
moments, this bill cant come fast enough, she said. This hearing was the first of three to
be held before the council votes on the bill. The next hearing will take place in January.
The parental paid leave family plans have popped up in companies like Netflix,
Facebook, Google, Twitter and Adobe. These companies have introduced extensive plans
that range from 12 weeks to one year of paid leave. Adobe, which insists its employees
are its most valuable asset, provides both parental and medical time off for total of 26

weeks. In 2007, Google increased its parental leave from 12 to 18 weeks. The company
spokesperson told The Atlantic that it just felt like the right thing to do. The growing
trend towards providing employees with paternity leave indicates that the U.S. is slowly
becoming more accepting of supporting parents outside of the workplace so they can
continue being effective workers when they return.
A New York Times article by Brigid Schulte recently released statistics regarding the
national climate on paid leave. On both sides of the aisle, paid leave has overwhelming
support. Schulte said, 81 percent 94 percent Democrats, 80 percent of Independents
and 65 percent of Republicans agree that workplace rules to ensure equal pay, paid time
off to care for family members and affordable child care is good for our nation.
Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner is one of the few women who was fortunate enough to leave her
job after having her baby. Rowe-Finkbeiners son was born with an autoimmune disease
that required extra care in addition to the attention newborns need from their mothers.
I had to quit my full-time job, Rowe-Finkbeiner said. I was lucky because I had a
husband whose job was linked to health care. Not everybody is so lucky. In fact, a quarter
of young families are living in poverty in the United States. Luck alone should not
determine if a family should survive, if a child should survive. My son is healthy now,
and largely because of the time I was able to spend with him when he was young and was
able to take him to the doctor.
Rowe-Finkbeiner is the CEO, co-founder and executive director of MomsRising.
MomsRising is a 10-year-old grassroots organization whose mission is to improve the
economic security of women, children and families in the United States.
Rowe-Finkbeiner and her co-founder and MomsRising president, Joan Blades cowrote The Motherhood Manifesto, a book that prompted them to put the policies they
dreamed about into action. This was the start of MomsRising. Their website has become
a platform for women and moms to voice their opinions about the change and
implementation of public policy for families. Through volunteer opportunities,
community members have banded together to speak to legislators in favor of paid
parental leave by sharing personal stories.

Ruth Martin, their Senior Campaign Director, has been with MomsRising for five years.
She joined the MomsRising team shortly after the birth of her first child and the
discovery of BPA in bottles for infants. She has witnessed the power of of storytelling as
people share their triumphs and heartaches with each other.
I remember this one woman from Illinois shared with us that because she didnt have
paid sick days and because she couldnt take any time off from work, she delayed taking
her child to the emergency room when her daughter had an earache, Martin said. By the
time she got off work, the doctors office was closed. Finally, she took her daughter to the
emergency room over the weekend. Her daughters ear infection had gotten so bad that
her daughter ended up losing permanently 20% of her hearing. This could have been
avoided.
MomsRising has helped create a community space for proponents of paid leave to come
together, share their stories and speak on a public platform. We have every kind of
member at MomsRising, so new moms and old moms and grandmoms and people who
arent moms but know moms and love moms anybody who cares about mothers can be
a member of MomsRising, Martin said.
Morvika Jordan is a single, working mother of two who has been involved with
MomsRising since 2009. After the birth of her second child, she was unable to continue
work. Her company offered her unpaid leave, which she had no choice but to take. At the
time, her ex-husband was the sole source of income to maintain their household. I did
not have any source of income during that time so thats why the paid leave program
would have been beneficial, Jordan said. Even as a married couple, we had some
income coming in but in order to maintain the household and to bond with my child,
there was a rush to get back to work within that minimum six week timeframe. This
balancing act between being a mother and a worker is something that U.S. women have
long been trying to perfect.
Were the richest country in the world and we have to start looking at the human issue
here rather than the profits, Jordan said. Most companies make a pretty decent profit on
the whole, sometimes an extra buck here or there wont hurt them.

Sitting at the desk of her home office, Martin is surrounded by MomsRising posters that
read, Its Time to Use our Outside Voices, and We Need Paid Leave Now.
Our goal is to make America a place where families and businesses can truly thrive,
Martin said. Where families arent struggling to make ends meat. Where everybody who
works in this country has access to paid family leave, not just the 13 percent who have
access now. Where parents arent forced to choose between sending their kids to school
sick or losing a day's pay, or possibly even their job because they dont have earned paid
sick days."

Source List:
Charlotte Brock
Title: Student at George Mason University, Veteran, Single Mom
P: (202) 704 -6833
E: charlotte.brock@gmail.com
Date Interviewed: 12/4/2015
How: In-Person
Joanna Blotner
Title: Campaign Manager at D.C. Paid Family Leave
P: (202) 427 2376
E: joanna@dcpaidfamilyleave.org
Date Interviewed: 10/22/2015
How: In-Person
Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner
Title: Executive Director, Co-Founder and CEO of MomsRising
E: kristin@momsrising.org
Date Interviewed: 10/27/2015
How: On Phone
Morvika Jordan
Title: Business Manager at Paul Public Chater School, Single Mom
E: morvijo@gmail.com
Date Interviewed: 12/3/2015
How: In-Person
Ruth Martin
Title: Senior Campaign Manager at MomsRising
E: ruth@momsrising.org
Date Interviewed: 11/12/2015
How: In-Person