Work & Families:
"Time to Care" Campaign

Problem:

A young mother in Westchester should not have to face the choice of taking time to care for her newborn daughter or putting food on the table.  A working man in Buffalo shouldn’t have to risk financial hardship for his family to take care of his father after a serious stroke. Today, 66% of mothers of young children work outside the home and 20% of adults care for an elderly relative. The demands on our families have changed dramatically over the past 30 years, but our workplaces have not kept pace.  As a result, too often working adults must choose between their families and their jobs.  When President Clinton signed the federal Family and Medical Leave Act into law in 1993, it was a good start.  But many New Yorkers still are not able to take the time off they need.

The data and its consequences show the breadth and severity of the problem:

      • Less than ten percent of American workers get paid time off to take care of family members at times of extreme need.
      • Seventy-eight percent of people who need family leave can’t afford to take it.
      • Roughly half of all personal bankruptcies result from health care-related crises
      • According to one study, the United States is one of only five countries (the others being Swaziland, Lesotho, Liberia and Papua New Guinea) that do not have a national policy allowing parents to take paid time off to care for newborn children.

Solution:

The Working Families Time to Care Act would expand New York’s existing Temporary Disability Insurance (TDI) program to also cover family needs (e.g., leave for either parent to care for newborns or newly adopted children or for seriously-ill family members).Workers would receive up to 12 weeks of benefits, funded through a modest increase of premiums paid within the existing TDI program. Under the current Temporary Disability Insurance program, benefits are relatively low: 50% of a claimant's average weekly wage, up to a maximum of $170 a week. The Working Families Time to Care Act would extend the same level of benefits to new situations.  We also believe that benefits need to be increased to provide a more realistic level of support.

How We Can Win It:

Political Context: The Assembly has already passed a similar paid family leave bill in 2007, so we feel confident they will support paid family leave this coming year, and we have been working closely with the Governor and Assembly to draft a good bill. The historically Republican controlled Senate has been the chief obstacle to paid family leave passage. However, we have a new opportunity if the balance of power in the Senate shifts from Republican to Democrat in the coming legislative session.

This past year, in order to show the Senate that their constituents want them to pass this bill, we ran an aggressive, grassroots public outreach program in key Senate districts around the state:

  • We went door to door educating voters about paid family leave and where their elected official stands on it, collecting hand-written letters and on-the-spot phone calls urging the bill's passage.
  • We organized local press events in key Senate district highlighting constituents who would benefit from a paid family leave law as they try to juggle work with caring for a sick relative or new baby.
  • We drafted and collected various signers for op-ed and editorial articles to place in newspapers around the state.
  • We organized editorial visits to newspapers around the state to educate them on the merits of paid family leave.
  • We drafted and circulated letters of support addressed to Senators from various advocacy groups who have a stake in paid family leave as well as ask certain groups to add paid family leave to their own legislative agenda (for instance, AARP, NOW, chronic disease groups, early childhood development groups, parent groups, etc).
  • We are considering a substantial media buy in key Senate districts to educate constituents about paid family leave and their elected officials’ role in passing it.

We (together with the Paid Family Leave Coalition) have already built a state-wide coalition of organizations committed to winning paid family leave and we mobilized them to participate in the aforementioned activities.

After We Win:

Winning paid family leave will be a major victory. The next challenge will be raising public awareness about the existence of the benefit through outreach and education, so that the families who need it most will know how to access it. We will also need to run a campaign to raise the TDI benefit level overall to a more realistic level and peg it to inflation, so that poor and working families can actually afford to take the time off.