Tag: family leave

Everyone deserves the freedom and financial flexibility provided by Paid Family and Medical Leave

Every year, thousands of Minnesotans are faced with a difficult dilemma: go to work and earn a living or stay at home to care for a new, aging, or sick family member. This impossible conundrum pits work against family, putting many Minnesotans in dire financial circumstances that unnecessarily strain both them and their communities.

During this last legislative session, Minnesota’s DFL-House passed a bill that could have alleviated the burden of affording at-home care. Unfortunately for families across Minnesota, Republicans let the bill die in the Senate. Once again, Republicans failed to grasp the importance of measures like Paid Family and Medical Leave, which would help establish a stable financial foundation for Minnesota workers currently struggling to balance earning an income and caring for their families.

Today, 59 percent of Minnesotans lack access to any sort of family or medical leave, and only about 15 percent of Minnesotans have access to ?paid family or medical leave through their employer. Important to remember is that most of us will one day be confronted by the choice between working a job and providing at-home care, and 66 percent of voters in the U.S. agree they would likely face severe financial difficulty if forced to take unpaid family or medical leave. Continue reading “Everyone deserves the freedom and financial flexibility provided by Paid Family and Medical Leave”

New Polling Shows that Small Businesses Strongly Support Paid Family and Medical Leave

The following article by Shilpa Phadke and Danielle Corley was posted on the Center for American Progress website March 30, 2017:

AP/Jae C. Hong
A food truck co-owner hands a credit card back to a customer after taking an order in Burbank, California, July 2015.

A new poll, commissioned by the Center for American Progress and Small Business Majority, shows that 70 percent of small-business owners support a national paid family and medical leave insurance program. The poll, conducted by Lake Research Partners, found the following:

  1. 70 percent of small-business owners believe that it is important to establish a federal paid family and medical leave program that is gender neutral and allows workers to use leave to care for themselves or a family member. Forty-two percent believe that it is “very important” to establish such a program.
  2. Support for a national paid family leave program among small-business owners is growing. When a similar poll was conducted in 2013, 45 percent supported proposals to create a publicly administered paid family and medical leave program. That number has grown to 70 percent in just four years, demonstrating the rising awareness of the need for such a program. Continue reading “New Polling Shows that Small Businesses Strongly Support Paid Family and Medical Leave”