BY KIRSTEN DAVIS
In 2016, New Yorkers saw the implementation of paid family leave. It wouldn’t just allow family members time off after the arrival of a new baby or adopted child but would also allow paid time off to care for and assist loved ones with serious health conditions or those who had a family member currently deployed on active military service. However, not everyone who is eligible is benefitting from paid family leave.
According to the Chair of the Women and Gender Equity Committee Farah N. Louis, a 2024 study of New York’s paid family leave program found that for workers who earn less than $40,000 a year, only 48% of eligible workers claim paid family leave benefits. It also found that even where they do make claims for leave, these workers take significantly shorter leaves, only 7 weeks on average despite their eligibility for 14 weeks of leave. While the implementation is meant to help those who need it, the council believes they are not using it to its full potential and improvements need to be made.
Daniel Pollock, the First Deputy Commissioner at the Office of Labor Relations stated that roughly a quarter of employees take the leave intermittently. “So that is a significant portion that don’t take it all at one time and may take it intermittently over a longer period,” Pollock said. The paid parental leave program finds many eligible employees are using the paid family leave program, but a large percentage have chosen not to take leave continuously and instead take it in shorter intervals. This can be seen because of employees only making 67% of their wages during the duration of their leave, subtracting 33% of their wages on top of the 4% to 10.9% of wages that is deducted by taxes.
There is also the dilemma of many unions choosing not to opt into the paid family leave program. Some unions such as the United Federation of Teachers have their own paid parental leave. For those unrepresented that don’t have access to paid parental leave, Pollock had no information available at the hearing on how many of these employees must take unpaid parental leave.
In New York workplaces, the Council found, mothers often face a “motherhood penalty” which includes lower wages and fewer opportunities because they take time off to care for their children while fathers will receive a “fatherhood bonus” which sees an increase in wages for fathers. However, there is work being done in order to improve on the unfairness of paid family leave and in the workplace. “We provide support to agency human resource teams. That includes providing trainings for our agency human resource professionals. We also hosted a series of smaller group trainings where we covered PFL (paid family leave), PPL (paid parental leave), and other leave types,” said Ali Rasoulinejad, the Assistant Commissioner for Strategic Planning and Services at the Department of Citywide Administrative Services.
In providing trainings, the city does hope to see real change in paid parental leave and how both employees and employers use the program. They also allow for complaints to be made to 311 to prevent the mistreatment of those using the program. By improving on the program and attempting to make it more accessible for all represented employees, New York is working to provide better opportunities due to the growing number of women and mothers in the workplace.