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We Need
NJ Family Leave
Insurance
ACT NOW!
Join us in support of NJ Family Leave Insurance! For more
information regarding how you can help NOW-NJ and the NJ Family
Leave legislation effort, please contact NOW-NJ President
Maretta Short at
koolretta@netzero.net or Laurie Pettine, Chair of NOW-NJ
Mothers' and Caregivers' Economic Rights Task Force at
nownj_mcertf@yahoo.com.
Testimony: Family Leave Insurance, Senate bill 2249
By Maretta
J. Short, May 24, 2007
Family
Leave Insurance in the news:
"Paid
Family Leave Plan Is Good For Jersey"
(Home News
Tribune – January 30, 2008)
"Paid
Family Leave Measure Necessary In State"
(CourierPostOnline
– January 13, 2008)
Coalition
Partner links:
NJ Time To Care Coalition web site.
NJTC grassroots partner NJ Citizen Action.
Facts
about the bill:
•
S786/A2080 provides 6 weeks of TDI benefit to workers who need
it to care for new born or newly adopted child or to care for a
seriously ill family member.
• The
weekly benefit amount is 2/3-wage replacement up to max of $524
in 2008.
• A
minimum wage worker (someone making $7.15 an hour) will pay 34
cents a week or $17.84 a year.
• A worker
making $27,700 or more will pay 64 cents a week or $33. a year.
• As with
FMLA, an employer with less than 50 workers is not obligated to
hold the position of an employee who takes this leave.
• The
leave benefit can only be taken concurrent with existing unpaid
leave law. For the employee working for a business with 50
or more on staff, this 6 weeks of insurance benefit could only
be drawn from within the current time frame of the 12 week
unpaid leave law.
NJ Family
Leave Insurance bill S786 was re-introduced in the NJ State
Senate by Sen. Stephen M. Sweeney (D-3) and it’s companion bill
A2080 by Assemblyman John J. Burzichelli (D-3) in early 2008.
The New Jersey Time to Care Coalition supports this bill as they
did a similar bill from last legislative session (S2249/A3812).
NOW-NJ has been an active member of the coalition since 2005.
Since 1993
through NJ-FLI and the federal FMLA, New Jersey workers in firms
with 50 or more employees have been able to take 12 weeks of
unpaid leave to bond with newly born or adopted children or to
care for seriously ill family members. But without a
paycheck, too many men and women still can't take essential time
off. No one should have to choose between family and job.
According
to research done by Dr. Eileen Applebaum at the Center for Women
and Work at Rutgers University, New Jersey 's existing Temporary
Disability Insurance system offers a perfect framework to build
on to create a family leave insurance system to provide paid
family leave for New Jersey workers. TDI already provides
partial wage replacement to people who need time off from work
for their own illness or injury. Expanding the current TDI
into a family leave insurance system would require only that
workers make a small additional payment into the TDI fund.
Family
Leave Insurance (FLI) is a self-funded insurance program that
protects workers against total wage loss in case they need to be
absent from work to care for a seriously ill family member or to
care for a newborn or adopted child.
The days
of the working father and stay at home mom are long gone.
Americans spend more time at work and there are more women in
the workplace. Today, 70% of working families are headed
by two-earner couples or by a single working parent. More
workers find they need to care for aging parents.
Workers
want to be effective, productive workers and responsible family
members and shouldn’t have to choose between a sick family
member and a paycheck. Public policies & programs need to
be updated to reflect our changing workforce.
It is
appropriate for the government to implement programs that help
families meet the challenging responsibilities of work and
family. Family Leave Insurance cannot be purchased on the
private market.
According
to a recent
Rutgers Eagleton Institute poll,
78% of New Jerseyans support Family Leave Insurance.
http://www.njcitizenaction.org/flipollresults.pdf
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