Paid Family and Medical Leave - it is time!

This month I just feel like sharing my latest round of Paid Family and Medical Leave Testimony - I could actually create a little book with the full collection over the years… But here’s my most current way of thinking about why it is now time to pass this bill and get it in place to serve Minnesotans.

I'd like to address the idea that somehow a Paid Family and Medical Leave bill creates a huge brand-new expense for employers.  The assumption is that employees don't need or take leave times currently and that creating this bill to pay for leave time will suddenly mean my employees will all need 12 weeks off and what chaos that would be!

Well, I am already paying for employees to take leave time - some short, some longer.  We, as employers, already pay for staff to be away and when they just quit because there are no other options for being away.   We pay in re-hiring, in training, in lost production, in low morale, in the need to fill-in ourselves, or to go without paying ourselves to try to manage the time due to leaves.  It is already expensive.

However, unlike this bill, where I would pay a tiny amount on a regular basis, something we as employers can budget for and even price our products for, I currently am left to pay from non-existent business savings, or to rack up high interest credit card debt, take out loans, go to my own personal finances, or just give up paying myself to try to care for my staff.  How do I budget for an employee's health crisis, or their parent's death? 

As a caring state, we have set up ways to recognize our need to share burdens like these through unemployment insurance, medicare, social security, workers compensation funds - all of which recognize that I can't be expected to manage these costs on my own. What is stopping us from considering family or medical leaves as a cost I must manage on my own?

I have been testifying for this bill for six years.  I come back year after year and wonder why not this year?  This year, I have just finished paying a six-week leave for my cook to care for his dying father. Our other options?  Laying him off so he could collect Unemployment Insurance or telling him to just come in and work if he wanted to be paid, or as I ended up choosing to do, dig into my Covid emergency loan to pay the time off. Had Paid Family and Medical Leave been in place 5 years ago when he was hired, he and I would have both contributed into the fund and then felt a true sense of caring by having it available when he needed it most. 

What are we waiting for?