Business Council ramps up effort to oppose paid family leave

The state's largest business lobby is taking preemptive action against legislation that would mandate all New York businesses to provide employees 12 weeks of paid leave to handle family situations.

The Business Council of New York State Inc. has launched a Web-based advocacy campaign enabling business owners to e-mail state legislators to keep the family leave measures off of their agendas.

In 2007, the Democratic majority in the state Assembly needed just five days to introduce and pass a paid family leave mandate by a 105-21 margin, at the very end of the legislative session. The bill then died in the Republican-held state Senate.

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Since January, the proposed mandates have sat in their respective Assembly and Senate labor committees. The current legislative session is coming to a close, with 15 working days remaining.

There has been little movement on the issue this year. But The Business Council's move suggests that the issue could, like last year, be gaining traction late in the session, thanks to a push by the Working Families Party.

The question of whether Senate Republicans would back the measure remains to be seen. The Republicans may decide to approve the measure to gain political credit ahead of the November elections, when they could lose their current two-seat edge in the Senate.

Federal law requires employers to provide 12 weeks of unpaid family leave per year for employees to tend to newborns or sick family members. The law applies to companies with more than 50 employees.

A combination of factors--including increasing numbers of working mothers--has made paid family leave legislation more popular around the country. The proposals mirror the federal law, protecting the jobs of those who opt to take the unpaid leave.

Earlier this month, New Jersey became the third state to enact such a proposal. Starting next year, eligible workers can receive up to six weeks of paid family leave, earning no more than $524 per week during that time.

To date, such a mandate has been enacted in two other states. California was first in 2002, mandating that all employers allot six weeks per year. Washington joined on in May 2007, requiring all employers to offer five weeks of paid leave.

By comparison, leading proposals in New York call for 12 weeks of paid leave, capping family leave wages at $170 per week. The leading plan, drafted by former Gov. Eliot Spitzer, would apply to all businesses in the state.

As written, the proposed mandates would pay family leave wages out of the state's temporary disability insurance program, which employers and employees contribute to.

"It is unfair to ask hard-working New Yorkers to choose between economic security and caring for a loved family member," Spitzer said in his State of the State speech in January, paraphrasing the way many supporters frame the issue.

But business leaders have pushed back, arguing that the "one-size-fits-all" approach of the proposals in New York would hamstring the many small businesses around the state. Such a law would be a much smaller concern, they have said, if the legislation exempted small business from the law's requirements, mirroring how the federal unpaid family leave mandate is set up.

"The real expense of this mandate is the cost of replacing absent workers through mandatory overtime or temporary employees," The Business Council said. "This mandate will once again place New York outside the mainstream and impose a costly mandate."