The last time we discussed the toll that caring for older relatives takes on working people, particularly women, readers shared some wrenching experiences:
Karen from Los Angeles wrote that when her father, who had Parkinson's disease, moved in with her and her sister, she wound up losing her job in finance and became his full-time caregiver. "I wouldn't give up one moment I had taking care of my father," she said, but she described herself as "56 years old, very little in savings and no prospects for another decent job with benefits."
"I have not worked in over seven years," K.R. from New Jersey commented. "When I left my job to take care of my father, I never imagined that it would be this long." Now that he has died, she feels "hopeless" about finding work in a changing industry. And since she has stopped contributing to Social Security and funding her 401K, she is frightened about her own future.
The federal Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act, introduced Thursday in Congress, would provide paid leave for workers who need time off to care for family members with serious health conditions, to care for a newborn, or to recover from health problems, including pregnancy and childbirth. It wouldn't solve every problem for working caregivers, but its passage would certainly help.
Don't we already have a federal Family and Medical Leave Act? We do, enacted in 1993, but "it was always intended to be a first step, not the last," said Debra L. Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women & Families, which drafted that measure.
This proposed new legislation uses the same definition of a "serious health condition," including incapacity involving hospitalization, chronic conditions like diabetes, and long-term disability from dementia, stroke and other diseases. But it improves on the existing law in two ways.
First, it would cover vastly more American workers. The Family and Medical Leave Act only applies to companies with at least 50 employees; the new measure would cover employees regardless of the size of their company and would include more part-timers and the self-employed.
Second, unlike our current unpaid leave, the new legislation calls for paying employees part of their salaries while they are recovering or caring for infants or ailing family members. An insurance program funded by small payroll deductions from both employers and employees (each contributing two-tenths of 1 percent of weekly wages), it would allow workers to take up to 60 days leave a year and to be paid 66 percent of their wages, up to a $4,000 monthly cap. California and New Jersey have offered similar benefits for several years; Rhode Island's new law takes effect next year. (Check out the partnership's explanation of how the law would work.)
"This not only affects folks who get the care, but people who give the care," Ms. Ness told me in an interview. "They're probably working because they have to, and they don't have an economic safety net."
Indeed, a MetLife analysis of adult caregivers, based on federal data, estimated that leaving the workforce can cost them more than $300,000 in lost wages and pension and Social Security benefits.
But really, neither Ms. Ness nor I need to tell New Old Age readers how caregiving, or a personal health crisis, can cost them in every way: financially, physically, emotionally.
The more central question, to my mind, is whether this bill has a prayer of passage anytime soon. It took nine long years to pass the Family and Medical Leave Act; former President George H.W. Bush vetoed it twice before former President Bill Clinton signed it into law. And that involved unpaid leave.
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, and Representative Rosa DeLauro, Democrat of Connecticut, introduced the new measure but haven't enlisted any Republican co-sponsors, which doesn't bode well. The Obama administration hasn't commented, though it may this spring at a promised summit on working families.
And on the long list of organizations supporting the law — the National Alliance for Caregiving, the American Public Health Association, women's groups, unions, religious associations — groups representing the elderly, like AARP and LeadingAge and the National Council on Aging, are conspicuously absent. Already battling to maintain Social Security funding, they may not be eager to back another payroll tax, however small (and however separate from Social Security).
On the other hand, here's a question from Ann Bookman, an elder care researcher and director of the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts, Boston: "Why is it that in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, we haven't come up with paid leave where the money doesn't have to come out of workers' pockets?"
Dr. Bookman fears that low-income employees will struggle if even small sums get deducted from their paychecks, and would prefer that government share the cost with them and their employers.
Still, she applauded the two legislators for undertaking the challenge of giving American families the support that people in every other developed nation already have. "This is definitely a step forward," she said.
If it happens. We'll check in from time to time to track the measure's fate.
Paula Span is the author of "When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions."
Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang
The New Old Age Blog: A Federal Proposal for Paid Family Leave
Dengan url
http://healtybodyguard.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-new-old-age-blog-federal-proposal.html
Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya
The New Old Age Blog: A Federal Proposal for Paid Family Leave
namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link
The New Old Age Blog: A Federal Proposal for Paid Family Leave
sebagai sumbernya
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar