N.Y.’s painfully patchwork parental leave program – New York Daily News

In New York State, Democrats have controlled the governor’s office for 15 consecutive years. Democrats also have simultaneously controlled the state Senate and Assembly for three years and have held respective supermajorities as of 2021. This has paved the way for success on platform issues including the legalization of marijuana, criminal justice reform and a minimum wage which is now at or close to $15 statewide.

The New York State Paid Family Leave (NYPFL) program has also been championed as another big checked box. It is advertised by the state as “nation-leading” and the “strongest and most comprehensive” state program for family leave in the U.S.

The program, originally enacted in 2016, is now fully implemented, providing up to 12 weeks of paid leave to bond with a newborn, adopted or fostered child or to care for a family member with a serious health condition. In 2021, the program covered approximately 8 million workers.

For a program the state champions, it leaves much to be desired. Employees who take leave only earn 67% of their average weekly wage, and the maximum weekly payout is capped at 67% of the statewide weekly average wage. In 2022, that figure translated into a maximum pre-tax $1,068 weekly benefit. It hardly needs saying that the program makes survival in New York City more art than science. NYPFL is also a benefit that workers pay 100% of the explicit cost for through employee payroll deductions (capped at $423.71 annually).

It is widely known that most democracies have offered substantially more robust benefits for new parents for years if not decades. Look at every EU country, Britain, Japan, of course Canada, but also places like Tajikistan.

But to truly understand how our leadership postures on parenting leave, one has to look at how the state treats its own roughly 250,000 people on the payroll. In 2021, 105,900 total claims for parenting leave were funded through NYPFL. However, almost none of those claims belong to state employees. That is because the majority of state employees are not eligible for NYPFL or any alternative paid parenting leave benefits.

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In fact, New York’s on-the-books leave policy for the majority of its own employees was last promulgated by the Department of Civil Service in 1982, and that mandate only requires that state employees be provided with unpaid leave. Shockingly, pregnant employees need only be provided with sick leave in accordance with the “terms of eligibility for or entitlement to sick leave with and/or without pay.”

Yes, it is completely outrageous, and not in that beloved gritty New York tough way we like to advertise. New York State does not meaningfully participate in its own Paid Family Leave Program for new parents. Currently, only employees working for state universities, the division of housing and community renewal and some management employees appear to be eligible for NYPFL. To be clear, NYPFL is the floor of parenting leave benefits, not the ceiling. How such gross hypocrisy has gone unacknowledged and unremedied for years can only be explained by incompetence or…