Is Paid Family Leave Coming to Your State?

Oct. 2 -- When Sherri Landrum's daughter was shot in both legs last spring, she couldn't afford to take any time off of work to take care of her.

Landrum, a 41 year-old single mother of nine children who lives in Denver, was eligible to take up to 12 weeks off under the Family Medical Leave Act and still have her job waiting for her when she came back. But because she wouldn't get paid for that time off, Landrum had to keep working.

"I have nine children so there's no possible way I can take off work without pay," says Landrum, who works at a children's pediatrics center.

Landrum's situation highlights what many say is a need for paid family leave in the United States, one of the few industrialized nations that doesn't provide paid benefits to workers who give birth to a child or need time off to get over an illness or care for a sick family member.

In the United States, workers who take family leave are entitled to 12 weeks under the FMLA if they've worked for the company for at least a year and the company has 50 or more employees within 75 miles of its worksite. And while U.S. workers' jobs are guaranteed while they're on leave, that time off is unpaid for many of them.

A good number of U.S. companies do provide workers with some form of compensation while they're on leave through disability insurance or other programs. But now some state governments are moving to offer paid leave for their residents, much to the chagrin of some business and employer groups.

U.S. Paid Leave Benefits Pale

On a national level, efforts to provide paid family leave have been unsuccessful. The Clinton administration had proposed a plan to provide paid family leave using unemployment insurance funds, but it never got off the ground and was eventually quashed by the Bush administration.

And compared to what workers in other nations are eligible for, the United States pales in comparison.

If a woman has a baby in France, for example, she is entitled to receive up to 26 weeks of paid maternity leave, courtesy of the country's social security system.

In Austria, workers are allowed to take up to 78 weeks off paid to care for a sick child who is under three years of age, paid for by their employer.

And in Spain, workers can have a paid leave of up to 52 weeks to care for a sick parent or a spouse.

The United States is "the only country other than Australia that doesn't have paid leave," says Thomas Kochan, professor of work and employment relations at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management and co-director of the MIT Workplace Center. "We see this as very much of an individual choice than as a social policy."