Five fast facts about the FAMILY Act and paid leave

  Recently, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) reintroduced the FAMILY Act for the 118th Congress. This bill, which has been reintroduced in every Congress since 2013, would guarantee workers the right to paid, job-protected time off for serious health and caregiving needs.

  This column lists five fast facts on the FAMILY Act.

Schedules that work for working families

  Many workers in the United States are all too familiar with the pressure of managing work demands and family responsibilities. Now, imagine trying to juggle the two while not knowing your work schedule for the following week or how much your next paycheck will be. Unfortunately, this is a troubling reality for many workers with unfair work schedules. For example, among young workers, 38 percent receive their schedule with less than a week’s notice and 44 percent have no control over their work hours. Unfair schedules affect the health and economic security of workers and their families, harm employee morale, and may increase the likelihood of sexual harassment.

Rhetoric vs. Reality: Paid family and medical leave

  Access to comprehensive paid family and medical leave strengthens all American families because everyone potentially needs to take off from work at some point to recover from an illness, care for a family member, or welcome a new child. But the United States is the world’s only advanced economy that does not guarantee some form of paid leave for workers. The result is that only 12 percent of private-sector workers in the United States have paid family and medical leave. In most American families, all the parents in the home are employed, meaning there is no full-time stay-at-home caregiver, and the majority of American families rely on a female breadwinner or co-breadwinner. Paid family and medical leave policies are already working across the United States, as cities, states, and individual employers embrace them. But without a national solution, millions of workers and their families are left out.