This week I visited the Capitol for the first time to testify on House Bill 208 because paid family leave is incredibly important to me, my family and most of the people I know.
When my daughter was born, I took unpaid leave and my husband used years’ worth of accumulated sick and personal leave. To spend time with our newborn, we put student loans on forbearance, lost three months of income and burned through our savings.
Most think paid leave is maternity leave, but it is more. As a physical therapist, I see families trying to figure out how help hurt or aging family members. Recently, I had a woman in tears describing how stressful full-time care-giving is for her husband, and the financial stress compounds the situation. Montana should place more value on the importance of family. Every family, at some point, will need paid leave.
Studies show that paid family leave is better for employers, families and the economy. I know it would have helped our family and I hope someday it will be available for my daughters and to all families in Montana.
Please call the House Business and Labor Committee at 444-4800 and support HB208.
Financed by a new state-run insurance fund, Montana would offer up to 12 weeks of paid leave to workers who need to care for a child or ailing family member, under a bill heard Monday at the Legislature.
Rep. Moffie Funk, D-Helena, said the plan will make Montana one of the leaders nationwide on the issue of paid leave, which is widely offered in most other industrialized countries, but not here.
“Families should not have to choose between taking care of each other or taking a financial dive,” she said. “The question is, do we work together to find a solution or do we just keep wringing our hands?”
Yet the state’s main business lobby, the Montana Chamber of Commerce, came out against Funk’s House Bill 208, saying it won’t work and will end up costing businesses money they can’t afford.
“If this program were to be implemented, it’s our position that the program costs would very quickly shift almost entirely to employers,” said Cary Hegreberg of the Chamber. “Our small employers are not capable of taking on this kind of burden, despite how much it might benefit employees.”
Cary Hegreberg, Montana Chamber of Commerce
The House Business and Labor Committee heard HB208 Monday, but took no immediate action.
HB208 would create a fund financed by most employers and workers across the state, with a fee set by the state Labor Department. The fee could not be larger than 1% of any eligible employee’s monthly wages. Self-employed workers could opt into the fund.
The fund would grow to nearly $90 million by 2021, according to a fiscal analysis of the bill.
Workers could get up to 12 weeks of paid leave, financed by the fund, if they have a “serious health condition” or are caring for a new child in the family or a family member with a serious health condition. They must apply to the state Labor Department.
Hegreberg said there’s no way for the department to verify if someone has a sick relative, and that employers could constantly face the prospect of losing vital employees for months at a time – and be required to provide the same job when the worker returned from leave.
“It literally invites employees to find a sick relative somewhere to go and take care of them,” he said.
Funk said the business lobby could help fix whatever problems it sees in the bill, rather than “just standing opposed with hyperbolic cynicism.”
Numerous people and organizations favored the bill, including the Bullock administration and several persons who had to leave work to take care of loved ones in need.
Emilie Ritter Saunders, MT Dept of Commerce
Emilie Ritter Saunders of the Department of Commerce said Montanans had nearly $80 million in lost wages in 2017 because of unpaid parental leave, and that access to family leave would make Montana an attractive place for workers in a tight labor market.
Nina Heinzinger, a state employee in Helena, told the committee that she had both benefited from family leave and suffered from its lack.
She said she had to drive constantly to Missoula from Helena over several weeks, without paid leave, to help take care of her son after he had a traumatic brain injury in an accident – while maintaining a part-time job.
But this year, while working for the state, she had paid leave that allowed her to take care of her elderly mother, who died on Sunday.
“This type of leave made it possible for me to be with her while she suffered health problems and was placed in Hospice,” Heinzinger said, her voice breaking with emotion. “I was able to spend time with her as she lay dying. … Paid leave allowed me to focus on my family. I didn’t have to choose between money and my mom.”
(UM Legislative News Service) Montana workers, including those who are self-employed, could receive paid medical or family leave through a statewide fund if a new bill introduced to the Legislature becomes law.
Rep. Moffie Funk, D-Helena, is sponsoring House Bill 208, which would couple an initial state investment with matched employer and employee contributions to create the fund. Funk said workers, especially women, are deterred from working if they know they’ll lose their job to care for a family member. She said offering leave for anyone to care for family members is a way to incentivize workers to stay in the state.
“Montana is facing a worker shortage and we need to do whatever we can to keep our people in this state,” Funk said. “And, with wages being what they are, being able to offer this benefit is a great step in the right direction.”
The insurance fund would pay for up to 12 weeks of paid leave for personal injury or family care leave, and wouldn’t be accessible until it was sustainable. The bill would also give employees on leave job security, and fine employers who fire employees for taking leave.
Ronda Wiggers with the Helena Chamber of Commerce was one of three opponents to the bill during its public hearing Monday. She said small business are rarely able to find someone to cover for employees on leave. She also said the guidelines on who can access the fund and for what reason, like being able to take time off to care for people who are the “equivalent of an acknowledged family relationship,” aren’t strict enough to sustain the fund.
“We believe that it’s broad enough that you’re going to run out of money. This amount of money would not fund this program,” Wiggers said. “And, we’ll be back here in two years wanting to know what to do about the people who paid into it. But, then, when they went to get benefits, the benefits weren’t there for them because they were allocated out to other people.”
Heather O’Loughlin with the Montana Budget and Policy Center was one of 13 supporters of the bill. She said the bill was modeled after other states’ policy, some of which have offered paid leave for over a decade.
“We have a lot of data on the participation rate,” O’Loughlin said. “It’s not a significant percentage of the workforce that’s taking this leave year over year.”
HB 208 would cost about $2.6 million per year in state funding to set up the fund and insure state employees.
The House Business and Labor Committee did not immediately vote on the bill Monday.
Tim Pierce is a reporter with the UM Legislative News Service, a partnership of the University of Montana School of Journalism, the Montana Broadcasters Association and the Greater Montana Foundation.
A state lawmaker is seeking to establish an insurance program for eligible Montanans taking family and medical leave from their jobs.
House Bill 208, carried by Rep. Moffie Funk, D-Helena, would provide for up to 12 weeks of leave benefits annually for workers with eligible health or family situations, such as the birth or adoption of a child or the illness of an elderly parent or family member.
The leaves would be paid from a state fund financed primarily with money from employers, employees and people who are self-employed.
The Montana Policy and Budget Center joined with the federal and state labor departments in 2014 to research the benefits of paid leave and the specifics of a policy for Montana. Heather O’Loughlin, the center’s co-director of research and development, told the House Business and Labor Committee on Monday that workers with access to paid leave are more likely to stay not only in the workforce but with their current employer.
Acting co-chair Emilie Ritter Saunders of the governor’s Equal Pay for Equal Work Task Force told the committee Montanans potentially lost $80 million in 2017 from taking unpaid parental leave.
Montana Women Vote, AARP Montana and the state Federation of Public Employees were among organizations that voiced their approval Monday.
“At some point, all of us are going to find ourselves in a situation in which we need leave,” said Executive Director Kelly Rosenleaf of Child Care Resources in Missoula, who told the committee about her experience taking paid leave to care for her mother after a fall. “For (a) medical reason, for ourselves or for somebody we love in our family.”
Rep. Laurie Bishop, D-Livingston, spoke of the bill’s benefits to Montana’s working women in a Monday press conference surrounded by House Democrats.
“Paid leave insurance would give working women a path to return to their jobs. It would empower women to increase their personal lifetime earnings and would also provide a significant boost to our state’s economy,” said Bishop, who talked about the difficulty of foregoing income as she took care of her father-in-law in his final years.
Opposition in Monday’s hearing came from the Montana and Helena Area chambers of commerce, who said the bill’s costs would overwhelm Montana employers over time.
“Despite the well intentions of this bill and despite the compelling testimony that you all heard, the chamber believes that this bill is hugely problematic,” said Cary Hegreberg, president and CEO of the Montana Chamber of Commerce.
Hegreberg called “a huge problem” the portion of the bill that states the Montana Department of Labor and Industry “may by rule determine whether a covered individual is subject to documenting” their reason for claiming leave benefits.
“In other words, there’s not much enforcement in this bill for employees who would decide to take advantage of the provisions of this program,” Hegreberg said. “So how in the world would the Department of Labor determine if my grandson in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, needed my care for a period of many weeks?”
Funk said she found some of the reasoning behind opposition to the bill “cynical and insulting.”
“They have no solutions,” Funk said. She also asked that those in opposition to the bill help with finding a permanent solution.
In last week’s State of the Union address, President Donald Trump remarked that he was “proud to be the first president to include in my budget a plan for nationwide paid family leave.”
Trump’s 2018 budget proposal called for six weeks’ paid leave after a child’s birth or adoption.
Recent Comments