An Exhilarating and Validating Moment for Paid Leave

The following statement can be attributed to Vicki Shabo, Senior Fellow for Paid Leave Policy and Strategy for the Better Life Lab at New America:

“Paid leave is an essential gender, racial and economic justice issue. It supports small businesses. It’s an issue that brings people in the country together across partisan divisions. And it’s essential to the country’s economic competitiveness and productivity.

As an advocate and expert who has spent more than a decade working to advance comprehensive paid family and medical leave at the federal and state levels, it’s exciting—and smart—that both President Biden and the chairman of Congress’ most powerful committee, Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), have made national paid leave a centerpiece of their family economic security and economic recovery plans.

The key pillars of a robust national paid family and medical leave policy—comprehensive paid leave for all working people, adequate wage replacement and a modern definition of family—are central to ensuring that paid leave is available and accessible to people across the country, no matter where they live, their job or their serious care need. National paid leave must expand access from one-fifth of workers who have paid family leave at their jobs now to virtually all workers and must ensure people can care for themselves and their loved ones in the happiest and scariest of times.

The fact that robust national paid leave proposals are part of the Biden-Harris American Families Plan and the Neal Building an Economy for Families Act is a testament to the work of many people: paid leave congressional champions Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) whose FAMILY Act laid the groundwork for the consideration of paid leave at the federal level, the leadership of state and local advocates and policymakers, researchers who have quantified the value of paid leave and the costs of the status quo, business leaders who have championed paid leave, and the lived experiences of countless people across the country who have had to endure the wrenching hardship of forgoing time with new children or dying loved ones in order to avoid the consequences of unpaid leave.”

For more analysis on the Biden-Harris plan, the Neal plan and the FAMILY Act, click here to view our explainer.