������Ƶ

President Dwight Eisenhower fought against the “pro-business” interests in 1956 to successfully pass the Disability Insurance amendment to the Social Security Act.

Although Europeans had provided this public benefit to workers for decades, the Chamber of Commerce argued it was too expensive and burdensome to business to be worth it. Yet Congress knew that injuries were bankrupting many families and putting severe financial strain on others.

The need was great. Eisenhower succeeded. Individual workers and the economy as a whole benefitted.

This is parallel to our situation today with the fight for paid family leave insurance. Europeans have had it successfully for years. Business interests, including one interpretation of the commissioned by the Hawaii Legislative Reference Bureau, claim it will be onerous to business. Yet we know that too many families are burdened with infant care or elder care, causing financial hardship and even bankruptcy.

Current programs of the Federal Family and Medical Leave Act and the Hawaii Family Leave Law provide a basis for workers to take time off work to act as caregivers when the need arises.

There are limitations that prevent both of these programs from providing adequate benefits, however. Both the FMLA and HFLL only cover 60% of workers on both the national and state level and neither program offers paid time off. This essentially discourages workers from using these programs and creates greater financial burdens for those who do choose to take the leave.

In 2017 working families on the national level lost $20.6 billion in wages due to the lack of paid family leave; on the state level, they lost approximately $2 billion in 2011 when caring for loved ones.

Family leave is important for fathers. As seen in studies from states already providing paid family leave insurance, a lack of paid leave discourages men, especially fathers, from taking time off to care for family members. Thus, the responsibility of care-giving falls heavily upon women: on a national level, women make up approximately 75% of informal caregivers.

Only 22% of women have employers offering paid maternity leave. Some mothers in the state of Hawaii may receive temporary disability insurance after giving birth, but this program solely covers the time needed to recover from complications from childbirth. It also fails to cover families adopting an infant.

Multiple Dividends

Family leave for mothers pays multiple dividends. In a California study, women who took paid family leave were more likely to breastfeed. Taking the leave decreases the risk of health problems for babies, which includes asthma, diabetes, eczema, and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. It also decreases a mother’s chance of developing breast and ovarian cancer, diabetes, and hypertension after childbirth.

Women who take paid leave for bonding purposes are 40% less likely to use food stamps than women who return directly to work after childbirth.

This responsibility of caring for a child can negatively impact careers as 29% of women workers cite relinquishing a promotion, training, or assignment to care for a family member. Twenty percent report that they gave up full-time employment to become an informal caregiver.

The responsibility of care-giving falls heavily upon women.

In Hawaii, 63% of children grow up in households in which both parents work, so it is likely that a woman will be both the caregiver of the family and a source of income as well.

While 70% of claims relate to infant care, the bulk of the rest of the claims are for elder-care. Kupuna are a cherished and growing part of the population. This segment of the population is on track to increase by 310% between 1980 and 2035.

The “silver tsunami” of people over the age of 60 is expected to boost their share of the population to approximately 29% by 2040. Unfortunately, many workers struggle to care for the needs of their dependent and elderly family members.

While paid family leave is beneficial for parents and newborns alike, it also offers benefits to businesses as well. In a California study on the impact of paid family leave on both large and small businesses, employers reported that implementing the program increased their employee retention rate and thus helped them to save a total of $89 million a year due to their lower turnover rates.

In the study, the benefits of paid family leave were especially seen in “low-quality” job industries, in which 83% of workers returned to their employer after taking paid family leave, 10% more than those who did not take paid family leave.

Moreover, 89% of employers said that paid family leave had either a positive effect or no effect on their workers’ productivity and 91% reported no impact or a positive impact on their businesses’ performance and profitability.

Perhaps surprisingly, small businesses with 100 or less employees were less likely to report negative effects than larger ones, possibly because these businesses already had well-established coping mechanisms to deal with employee absenteeism prior to the implementation of the paid family leave program.

In the most recent budget, the federal budget includes 12 weeks of family leave for federal employees. Let’s follow their lead.

Our Legislature must not get caught up in bickering over who pays how much or business interests crying wolf. Just as the Social Security Act and its Disability Insurance amendment, we need politicians with courage to stand up to the naysayers and pass a bill to meet the large and growing needs of families.