text: Christian Glatz: http://www.flickr.com/photos/24092454@N00/12582433/ 
   
   During his State of the Union speech in January, President Barack Obama lamented that millions of Americans do not have paid sick and parental leave. "And that forces too many parents to make the gut-wrenching choice between a paycheck and a sick kid at home," he said at the time. 
   
   His words haven't prompted Congress to adopt any nationwide policies, but a pair of legislators and a coalition of advocacy groups are hoping to do away with that "gut-wrenching choice" in the nation's capital. 
   
   D.C. Council members Elissa Silverman and David Grosso — independents who hold at-large seats — on Tuesday introduced the Universal Paid Leave Act of 2015, under which all D.C. residents and workers would be eligible for 16 weeks of paid leave for medical or family reasons, including the birth, adoption or fostering of a child. 
   
   "Almost every country in the world has paid family leave except for the United States, and I think it's time that we rectify that," says Silverman, a first-term Council member who has identified with progressive causes like raising the minimum wage. 
   
   If passed, the bill would offer D.C. workers the most generous paid leave in the country. 
   
   Paid leave for all 
   
   Who Would Qualify? Any employee — whether or not they live in D.C. — of a private business, organization or company based in D.C. 
   
   
   
   Employees of the federal government who live in D.C., or D.C. residents who work outside the city, could opt into the system by paying their own contributions to a city-managed leave fund. 
   
   
   
   Maryland and Virginia residents who work for the federal government in D.C. would not be eligible. 
   
   Last year, the D.C. government adopted a new policy granting city employees up to eight weeks of paid sick and family leave. In January, Obama issued an executive order allowing federal employees to take up to six weeks of paid leave after the birth of a child, and last month he ordered that federal contractors give workers up to seven days of paid leave. 
   
   And though D.C. law allows employees to take up to 16 weeks of leave after having a child and not lose their job, it does not require that the leave be paid. And for those employers that do offer paid leave, it is often under the guide of short- and long-term disability plans, which means that the amount paid can be less than an employee's usual salary. 
   
   But under Silverman and Grosso's bill, almost all D.C. workers holding full- and part-time jobs would be eligible for paid leave for family or medical reasons. 
   
   The measure would work much like unemployment insurance. Private employers would pay into a new Family and Medical Leave Fund, while federal government workers who live in D.C., along with residents who work outside the city, would make personal contributions to the fund. 
   
   Contributions would vary by salary; 1 percent for every employee making over $150,000 per year, 0.8 percent for those in the $50,000-150,000 range, and so on down. Self-employed residents would be allowed to opt out. 
   
   An employee taking leave would file a claim with the fund, which would pay out the benefits. Under the bill, the fund would cover 100 percent of the first $1,000 an employee makers per week and 50 percent thereafter, for a maximum of $3,000 per week over the course of the leave taken. 
   
   Mothers and children attended Tuesday's D.C. Council session, where a paid leave bill was introduced. (WAMU/Martin Austermuhle) 
   
   In 2014, D.C. received a $96,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Labor to study options for expanding paid leave. Silverman says that the bill being introduced Tuesday draws from some of the research done for that study, as well as conversations her staff had with officials in California, New Jersey and Rhode Island — the three states that currently have paid leave policies on the books, albeit none approaching the amount of time being considered in the D.C. bill. 
   
   Advocates say they do not yet have know how much the bill would cost employers, but that an estimate will be produced by the Office D.C. Chief Financial Officer as the measure moves its way through the Council. 
   
   Silverman says she recognizes that the bill will have a cost to both employers and employees working outside D.C., but that only with a universal approach will the measure succeed. 
   
   "There is a cost, but just like why we have a health insurance exchange, which then pools risk and lowers the cost for everyone, paid family leave takes the same approach," she says. 
   
   Advocates say that while the bill will benefit all D.C.-based employees, it's most important for low-income workers. 
   
   "I can't tell you how many times I've sat in front of a worker who is pregnant, and in what should be a joyful time is sitting in front of me crying and saying she won't have an income anymore as soon as her baby comes into the world," says Sheena Wadhawan, advocacy director at the D.C. Employment Justice Center, one of the dozens of organizations backing the bills. 
   
   "This bill is important because workers should be able to have a child, should be able to care for their families without it turning into the worst moment in their lives when they lose their income and are forced to choose between caring for their children and being able to pay their rent," she adds. 
   
   Concerns from business community 
   
   But as with many measures that have emanated from the Council, some sectors of the business community are concerned with the costs of providing paid leave — and say those costs could force businesses to relocate to outside the city. 
   
   "While the business community definitely wants happy employees, our concern is that there are some issues that haven't been addressed, some of the details, and we're worried that this could affect the business climate in Washington, D.C.," says Harry Wingo, president of the D.C. Chamber of Commerce. 
   
   Wingo says he was initially consulted when the bill was being drafted, but that the chamber will not support the version of the bill being introduced. 
   
   "Our concern is that this would go further than any other type of legislation in the nation, in a bad way. The burden would be completely on employers, so this would be employer funded, and in fact employees would not be contributing as they do in other systems," he says. 
   
   Grosso says that contributions to the fund fall exclusively on employers because the city's charter prohibits it from imposing a tax on non-residents. And even though the cost will fall on employers, Silverman says those same employers would benefit from having happier employees. 
   
   "I understand the chamber's concerns, but study after study show that workers who feel like their employer care about them end up being more productive workers, and that benefits employers," she says. 
   
   That's what Jamie Davis-Smith, who attended the Tuesday Council session with her 10-month-old son in tow, said about the six weeks paid leave her husband was given by his employer. 
   
   "I know that for families such as my own that have been lucky enough to experience even a short period of paid leave, it really results in a great appreciation to your employer and promotes a lot of loyalty to your employer," she says. 
   
   Advocates also say that the business community similarly complained about other measures passed by the Council, including a 2008 bill requiring that all employers give employees paid sick leave. In May, the D.C. Auditor published a report saying that that law — which was expanded in 2014 to include tipped workers — had "minimal impact on employers." 
   
   Grosso says the bill would move D.C. closer to what is considered a standard benefit for families in many other countries. 
   
   "In other countries, this is the norm. And this is how it is done, and it is supported because they believe in strong families in other countries better than we do here," he says. 
   
   The bill has been assigned to a Council committee for a hearing and markup, after which it would go to the full Council for voting. Two separate votes are required for any legislation to pass, after which it is sent to the mayor for consideration. 
   
   According to Grosso's office, the bill is being co-sponsored by Council members Brianne Nadeau (D-Ward 1), LaRuby May (D-Ward 8), Anita Bonds (D-At Large), Kenyan McDuffie (D-Ward 5), and Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3) — giving it enough votes to pass the Council. ||||| Like millions of soon-to-be mothers, Charlotte Brock, 35, faced an agonizing decision before the birth of her child: Stay at work and pay for professional care or quit her job and devote time to the unpaid labor of child rearing. The stakes were especially gut-wrenching since Brock, a Marine veteran who spent two years in Iraq, is a single mother. 
   
   “They’re only babies for such a short period of time,” she says. “I really wanted to do the best I could do for him -- being there, bonding with him, being attentive to his needs, helping him develop in the best way possible.” 
   
   It was also a decision she didn’t think she’d have to make. Brock had a good job at a defense policy think tank in Washington, D.C., run by ex-military people and was earning upwards of $65,000 a year. The firm offered generous paid sick time and vacation benefits. It only seemed natural to Brock that those benefits would extend to paid parental leave. 
   
   “I guess I had just misunderstood,” she says. 
   
   Eventually, Brock's bosses offered her 12 weeks of unpaid leave -- the maximum amount provided under the Family and Medical Leave Act-- even though the federal law only covers firms with 50 or more workers and did not apply to Brock’s employer. Either way, she decided against it. The amount of time off was too short, and most importantly, it was unpaid. So she quit her job and moved in with her parents in Ottawa, Canada, where she spent the next two years. 
   
   When Brock dropped out of the labor force five years ago, she followed in the footsteps of millions of other Americans who are overlooked by the government's official count of the unemployed. As this month’s jobs report shows, a smaller share of the civilian population is officially in the labor force -- either employed or unemployed and looking for work -- than at any time since the late 1970s. It’s one of the big reasons why bosses across a wide array of sectors aren’t feeling pressure to hike pay, even as the official unemployment rate slides downward. 
   
   It’s a hot political talking point today as the White House touts the strength of the economic recovery. But the steady decline in so-called labor force participation predates the Obama administration by nearly a decade. It’s driven in large part by demographics: The Baby Boomer generation, whose careers extend from the waning years of the post-World War II boom to the recent recession, is gradually retiring. Economists deem that mass exodus responsible for about half of the total decline since 1999. 
   
   The Great Recession fueled the drop, too. People who can’t find work sometimes give up the search for a new job and drop out of the labor market altogether -- a trend that notably marked the recent downturn. On top of that, working-age men have gradually been leaving the labor force for decades -- in large part as decent-paying blue-collar jobs have either disappeared or left American shores, replaced by low-paying service sector jobs. 
   
   “It’s about the attractiveness of jobs that are available,” says Harry Holzer, a professor of public policy at Georgetown University. “If you were a high school graduate that had a good paying job in a field like construction or manufacturing, what you have left to choose from now is going to be a huge step down. It’s hard to take a job that’s paying 30 to 40 percent less than before.” 
   
   An often overlooked part of the story, though, is the decline in working-age female participation -- people like Brock. 
   
   For decades, women entered the U.S. labor force at a rapid rate, growing from near 40 percent participation at the dawn of the 1960s to 70 percent by the turn of the century. Since then, the trend has tapered off. From 2000 to 2014, labor force participation for women aged 25 to 54 fell nearly 3 points to 73.9 percent, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). On this measure, the U.S. ranks behind the vast majority of its fellow OECD nations -- 17th out of 22. Others, meanwhile, are seeing steady gains. 
   
   A 2013 National Bureau of Economic Research paper from Cornell economists Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn shed light on a major reason behind the discrepancy between the U.S. and other OECD countries: the dramatic difference in paid parental leave policies. Most of the world guarantees workers this benefit; only the United States and Papua New Guinea do not. 
   
   Paid parental leave makes re-entry into the labor market easier, since workers are entitled to their old jobs back, says Kahn. “But it also actually encourages women to get into the labor market even before they have children, because it’s a benefit you can only qualify for you if you have a job. The benefit actually serves to bring people into the labor market so they can qualify for the benefit in the first place.” 
   
   The system under the Family and Medical Leave Act is far more limited, Kahn says. Not only is it unpaid, but it doesn’t cover small employers or workers who’ve worked less than a certain number of hours in a year. The amount of actual guaranteed time off too is dramatically less. 
   
   “If you have a less than a 50 percent chance of qualifying for the benefit, and it’s a 12-week period. That’s much less encouragement than a country where it’s universal and you have a 57-week entitlement,” says Kahn. (Norway offers this.) 
   
   Instead the stateside system leads to plights like Charlotte Brock’s, whose re-entry into the labor force turned out to be as grueling as the decision to leave. After two years out of work, Brock she says she struggled to find a job when she was ready to work again. “I’ve never really recovered professionally from that,” she says. 
   
   Brock is now studying for a master’s degree in industrial and organizational psychology. She was also working part time as an editor before losing her job this week. In the meantime, she’s become an unabashed supporter of paid parental leave. 
   
   “It’s a question of human rights for the mother and the child,” she says. “We’re mammals, we’re meant to have this bonding. To not include it is inhumane.” ||||| D.C. could have the best family leave benefits in the country if the city's council adopts a plan that would grant District residents and workers 16 weeks of paid leave. (WUSA 9) 
   
   D.C. could have the best family leave benefits in the country if the city's council adopts a plan that would grant District residents and workers 16 weeks of paid leave. (WUSA 9) 
   
   The District would become the most generous place in the country for a worker to take time off after giving birth or to care for a dying parent under a measure supported by a majority of the D.C. Council. 
   
   Under the legislation that will be introduced Tuesday, almost every part-time and full-time employee in the nation’s capital would be entitled to 16 weeks of paid family leave to bond with an infant or an adopted child, recover from an illness, recuperate from a military deployment or tend to an ill family member. 
   
   The broad new worker benefit, enthusiastically supported by the Obama administration, would be paid from a fund created by a new tax on D.C. employers. The benefit would dwarf family-leave assistance in all 50 states and would also mark a step toward benefits offered by most European countries, where parents can take as much as a year of paid time off following the birth of a child. 
   
   The measure also could soon mark a rare legislative victory in Washington for President Obama — not on Capitol Hill, but down Pennsylvania Avenue inside city hall. 
   
   The administration has spent years watching its ideas to address rising income inequality fall flat in Congress amid partisan gridlock. The proposed measure amounts to a new strategy in executive branch workarounds: using local law to forge a policy bulkhead for bigger changes nationally. Supporters said the bill would help to address the widening gap between rich and poor by helping families take time off when they otherwise couldn’t make ends meet. 
   
   D.C. Council member Elissa Silverman said paid family leave would make the District more competitive regionally by making it easier for women to reenter the workforce. “There is a big problem with keeping women in the workplace and making it feel like you can come back.” (Bill O'Leary/THE WASHINGTON POST) 
   
   “The Obama administration has realized the action is on the state and local level, and they gave us the money to model how this could actually work,” said D.C. Council member Elissa Silverman (I-At Large), one of the lead supporters of the measure. “We now have a national platform and a great opportunity with this legislation to show how it can be done.” 
   
   The measure is the first major legislative product to flow from a grant program that U.S. Labor Secretary Thomas Perez has openly advertised as an end run on a Republican-controlled Congress, which, when it comes to worker compensation, has declined to take up the issue of a stagnated federal minimum wage. 
   
   [Perez, White House begin road show to build support for family leave] 
   
   “The United States is one of the few countries on Earth without national paid leave. Fortunately, we have seen remarkable progress . . . where innovative state and local officials are designing paid-leave policies that work for their citizens,” Perez said last week in a statement. 
   
   The D.C. Chamber of Commerce on Monday pushed back against the proposal, saying in a letter to the council that the business community has not been privy to the Department of Labor-funded research used to develop the legislation. The group warned that an entirely employer-funded family-leave program “would be unprecedented and make the District of Columbia dangerously uncompetitive.” 
   
   But an increasingly liberal D.C. Council has pushed the issue to the forefront and with greater force than even some Obama administration officials expected. 
   
   The D.C. legislation would more than double the length of any paid-leave program in the country. Only three states have enacted such laws over the past 10 years. Currently, the maximum benefit is six weeks of partial paid leave in New Jersey and California. 
   
   The District would offer 16 weeks and unprecedented coverage for workers’ salaries and hourly wages: 100 percent of pay for those making up to $52,000 a year. 
   
   Employees who earn more than that would be eligible for $1,000 a week plus 50 percent of their additional income, up to a maximum of $3,000 per week. 
   
   Almost all D.C. employees would be eligible. The only ones excluded would be residents of Maryland and Virginia who work for the federal government, because the city could not compel it to participate. District employees of the federal government and federal contractors could opt into the system and pay a small fee to participate. 
   
   [Poll: Do you support the D.C. paid family leave proposal?] 
   
   The plan would be paid for with a first-of-its-kind new levy on D.C. employers, akin to a state unemployment insurance pool. 
   
   Every D.C. employer would be required to pay into the fund on a sliding scale. Law firms, lobbying groups and others with the District’s highest-paid workers would pay the equivalent of 1 percent of the salaries of employees who earn above $150,000, or about $1,500 annually per worker. 
   
   On the low end, employers of minimum wage workers, who now earn $10.50 per hour, would have to contribute 0.6 percent of each worker’s pay, or about $131 per employee per year. 
   
   “It’s a very cost-effective program, it doesn’t require a lot of money to provide a whole lot of benefit,” said Jeffrey Hayes, study director for the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, the D.C. nonprofit organization that the District hired with its $96,000 Labor Department grant to model the plan. 
   
   Hayes used a series of sophisticated simulations to help determine how the District could afford to offer paid family leave for nearly all workers — full-time and part-time, and especially low­income workers. 
   
   Silverman and council member David Grosso (I-At Large), who pushed the measure for months behind the scenes, recently attended a symposium led by the Labor Department where the District’s efforts were lauded for helping to “push the needle” on family-leave law. 
   
   At the symposium, Perez announced the Obama administration would triple its grants for similar work, to a total of $2 million. It is behind efforts in 12 states and local governments nationwide to spur family leave laws. 
   
   Grosso last month took the plan before dozens of members of the local Chamber of Commerce and argued that it would make D.C. employers more competitive regionally because it would create loyalty to the District, compared with Maryland and Virginia, which have no statewide paid-family-leave programs. A handful of businesses have signed on in support, while others have said the plan would create burdens on companies to find temporary help if the paid leave entices more employees to utilize family leave already allowed under federal law. 
   
   But Grosso’s pitch to colleagues has primarily been focused on the bill as a partial solution to growing wage disparities. He has argued that family leave should not become the domain of the wealthy. 
   
   “The fact of the matter is, if you’re making less than $1,000 a week, you can’t make ends meet on a fraction of your pay. You can’t afford to take that leave,” said Grosso, chairman of the council’s education committee. 
   
   He pointed to research that men who care for their children as infants are more likely to be a bigger part of their kids’ lives later on. 
   
   “In this country, we really don’t reward strong families the way we should,” Grosso said. Like most other council sponsors of the bill, he does not have any children but said he and his mother had to stagger shifts years ago to care for a terminally ill grandmother.
target: – Washington, DC, could be about to leave the rest of the US behind and move a lot closer to Europe, at least as far as family leave is concerned. The DC Council backs legislation, to be introduced Tuesday, that would give workers 16 weeks of paid leave for events like the birth or adoption of a child, the terminal illness of a parent, or recovery from a military deployment, reports the Washington Post. The paper notes that the plan applies to almost all workers in the city (including part-time) and is more than double anything on offer in any of the 50 states. It will cover 100% of pay for people making $52,000 a year or less; the maximum weekly pay for the highest earners would be $3,000 per week. The new Family and Medical Leave Fund would be funded by a levy on employers that the Post likens to a state unemployment insurance fund, with employers paying in on a sliding scale that goes up to 1% of salaries for the highest-paid workers. WAMU reports the Universal Paid Leave Act of 2015 has the votes to pass the Council; the legislation would then go to the mayor. The DC plan is a big victory for President Obama's push to boost family leave. Instead of trying to get legislation through Congress, the administration is offering grants to help create state-level paid family leave plans. The administration "has realized the action is on the state and local level, and they gave us the money to model how this could actually work," DC Council member Elissa Silverman tells the Post. "We now have a national platform and a great opportunity with this legislation to show how it can be done." The US is one of the only countries in the world without paid maternal leave, and experts say that has caused a lower rate of female participation in the labor force, reports the International Business Times. (This tech firm offers mothers and fathers a year's paid leave.)