President Obama will unveil an executive order on Labor Day requiring federal contractors to offer their workers at least seven paid sick days annually, a move he hopes will push the United States into line with other Western countries when it comes to paid-leave laws.
He will also use a speech before the Greater Boston Labor Council on Monday to call on cities, states and the private sector to follow Boston’s example and offer employees at least six weeks paid parental leave.
Labor Secretary Thomas Perez told reporters Sunday that attending the G-20 Summit in Ankara, Turkey last week showed him that the U.S. is “far behind … from literally the rest of the world” on the issues of paid sick and paternity leave.
“Countries all over the world have more sensible paid-leave laws,” Perez said during a conference call on Sunday.
“We are one of just a handful of countries that fail to provide paid maternity leave,” Perez said in a Labor Department study released Friday. The study stated that the employers of 40 million working Americans do not offer paid sick leave of any kind, and the administration hopes that starting with federal contractors will encourage the private sector to follow suit.
The executive order requires federal contractors to offer one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked. A White House release said the move would give 300,000 people the ability to earn sick leave, and said Obama is calling on passage of legislation that gives everyone aid sick leave.
“For paid leave, it is a question of when, not if, for we are still lagging as a nation,” Perez said.
Obama will also call on Congress to pass his proposed Healthy Families Act, which would require any business employing more than 15 people to offer up to seven paid sick days a year.
In the Sunday conference call, the president’s advisers reiterated that Obama proposed $2 billion in his 2016 budget to encourage states to establish family- and medical-leave programs.
“In most families today, both parents work and have responsibilities caring for their children, aging parents or family members with disabilities,” Perez stated in the study. “Yet, the fundamental structure of work has not kept pace with the changing American family … many parents are forced to choose between taking an unpaid day off work—losing much-needed income and potentially threatening their jobs—and sending a sick child who should be home in bed to school.”
The Labor Department study argued that costs to businesses’ are minimal when they offer increased paid-leave benefits.
After “California and New Jersey enacted their public programs, most businesses reported positive or neutral experiences and few negative effects,” the study stated. “In a survey of California employers about the impact of Paid Family Leave on their business, most reported they could cover the work of employees on leave by temporary reassignments, and they did not incur any new hiring or training costs. More than 90 percent saw no evidence of abuse of leave benefits.”
