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Councilors propose six weeks' paid leave for new parents; Walsh says he'll sign measure
By adamg on Mon, 03/23/2015 - 2:58pm
City Councilors Tim McCarthy (Hyde Park, Roslindale, Mattapan) and Michelle Wu (at large) - who recently had a son - want to let city employees who have kids take time off with pay.
Under their proposal:
During the leave period, the employee shall be paid 100 percent of her or his base wages for the first two weeks, 75 percent of his or her base wages for the following two weeks, and 50 percent of base wages for the remaining two weeks.
Employees would be able to take off longer periods of time without pay.
The council decides Wednesday whether to send the measure to a committee for a hearing - the first step in passage. In their hearing request, they write:
Paid leave and workplace flexibility increase productivity, help to recruit more talented workers, lower worker turnover and replacement costs, reduce absenteeism, and improve job satisfaction.
Mayor Walsh says that if the council passes the proposal, he'll sign it.
It is important for parents to be engaged in a child’s early life. I am thankful that Councilors Wu and McCarthy are supportive of this initiative, to grant parents who devote their lives to public service the hard-earned support they deserve. My office is proud to support and introduce policies that advance both men and women in the workplace and all aspects of city life. It is my hope that businesses will consider taking the same action steps to ensure families are thriving and healthy.
Neighborhoods:
Free tagging:
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Comments
Very reasonable
Given the more generous leaves that many companies offer, this is not at all an unreasonable idea. Six weeks is still NOTHING and goes by incredibly fast, but it's nice of the city to offer a token.
Our ruling class betters on the high council
Vote themselves benefits many taxpaying families working and living in the city don't have but will now be expected to pay for.
Sometimes yes
but this is a place where a race to the bottom can be fought. I'm all for several, but not frequent, benefit for a major life event. What needs to be eliminated are excessive pensions where people retire from the MBTA making $60k/yr in their 40s, etc... or retire as acting captains and all that garbage.
I'd also put a lifetime cap of some amount in there, like you can get this three times or something. At some point, someone's religious convictions and/or desire for a big family doesn't trump our budget.
Cap pay and benefits of
Cap pay and benefits of elected to the median income/benefits of city residents. If the city does better they do better. If the city suffers they share the pain.
I want to like this
But as Gary already said, six weeks is nothing, especially when four of those weeks are at less than full pay.
Granted, it is better than the nothing currently offered to many, which is a disgrace on its own. I guess we'll take what we can?
You can usually use sick time.
At full pay and I think city employees get plenty of sick time. I have months and months of sick time in the bank that hopefully I'll never use.
Also, maybe the city council should save this benefit for future contract negotions? That way if a union asks for more paid time off, the city is already shown as giving something up.
I wish I remembered better
But I don't recall seeing a "you can use sick time when you have a kid" in the contract when I worked for the city. And I don't have access to it now so I can't go back and look.
Either way I didn't earn sick time that fast so that might have helped a little but probably not more than a few weeks.
Excellent point. On the
Excellent point. On the other hand, most of the negotiating of these contracts is done by union members with a lot of seniority and aren't planning to have any more kids.
Yes, but
if I recall correctly, if you live in an area that mandates paid parental leave, you can take the paid parental leave and then stack the FMLA leave you're entitled to on top of it. So you're getting 18 weeks of leave, but only losing 14 weeks pay. Or, you can decide to take just 12 weeks, take 6 weeks of partial-paid leave and 6 weeks of unpaid leave, and only lose 8 weeks pay.
Teachers too?
I wonder if this would apply to teachers. We currently only get to use "saved up" sick time, which we can carry over from year to year. During my first year with BPS, I had a baby and had to take a lot of unpaid time.
You have a union contract -
You have a union contract - read it.
Is it Use It or Lose It?
My only issue with this - Is it use it or lose it?
Or is it going to be one of those situations where you can bank the time for retirement like sick days? It should be used for its intended purpose. I have friends who work in city/state jobs that retired and had almost a year of sick time banked and got paid a nice lump sum on the way out the door.
um...
Kudos to Mayor Walsh for allowing Boston City workers to take up to 6 weeks of (partially) paid leave. BTW, the Family Medical Leave Act already allows for all U.S. workers to take up to 12 weeks of ( fully, partially, or unpaid) leave. I don't see what the big deal is. #loweringexpectations
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fmla
Yea FMLA lets you use all your sick time first.
So if you have a baby or your spouse does, you can use unlimited time as long as you have time in the bank.
(Unlimited in terms of the city can't put a limit on days you can use)
Unpaid
FMLA leave is unpaid.
Not necessarily
You may apply comp time and sick time when utilizing FMLA. I'm a municipal employee ( not Boston). I've taken 12 weeks of staggered time when each of my three kids were born. I was fully paid, via FMLA, by utilizing banked comp time and sick leave. If I had run out of my bank at 10 weeks, then I could have still taken 2 more weeks unpaid.
The comp time and sick time paid you
FMLA on its own is an unpaid protection of your job. If you are able, because you have time banked up that you are able to use, you are able to use that time during your leave to get paid. Which means if you don't have that extra time saved up, you are on an unpaid leave.
Great point,
but, realistically, how many City employees do you think haven't banked more than six weeks of time, when expecting a baby? One doesn't work a muni job for the money. One does it for the benes.
On the contrary, the city
On the contrary, the city compensates employees VERY well. Besides the benefits, there's the pension and the nearly-unlimited job security.
Those are benefits.
We take less up front, in order to allow for these benes.
private vs public salaries
>We take less up front, in order to allow for these benes.
I often hear similar claims, but I have never read any evidence that shows this to be true, in particular when when excluding the executive level salaries in the private sector, which greatly skew the private sector averages.
I'm more interested in a head to head comparison of rank and file workers in the city vs private sector. For example:
Are bus drivers in the city of Boston paid less then bus drivers in the private sector? If yes, by how much?
What about accountants? programmers? Welders? janitors? etc...
A programmer with a few years
A programmer with a few years on the job can expect to make $80-100k. That's for 40 or even 35 hours a week, plus paid overtime, and the freedom to moonlight as long as there's no glaring conflict of interest, like working for a city vendor. Although the private sector offers more upside if you're exceptionally talented (say, $150k), the private sector also has more downside (down to $0k). The government programmer can cruise for the rest of their career and not keep their skills up. Meanwhile they receive annual step increases, increased job security with higher seniority, and increasing vacation. Their benefits will be consistently negotiated up and grandfathered to keep them from going down. When the programmer reaches 65, they can retire with 80% salary and great healthcare.
Relative
City employees generally have middle-class wages and benefits which is becoming increasingly uncommon. Unlike private employees, public ones don't get Christmas bonuses, have limited opportunities to advance, and miss out on many of the perks that better private businesses can offer professional level employees.
They get paid a reasonable amount for their jobs. To get compensated VERY well you need to look to the private sector which has just as many turkeys and far more suites.
Planning much?
I worked for the City for 2 years. I took a sick day maybe once every four months, for the rare times I was actually sick. (Actually the more I think about it, the more it was probably around once or twice a year - it's been over a year since I've needed a sick day.)
When I left, I had 176 hours of sick time, which works out to 4.4 weeks.
So yeah, if you started working for the city in your early to mid 20s and you had several years to prep for a baby, you had enough sick time. Provided that you could use that much sick time at once, which I'm hoping you could and I am remembering the contract poorly.
Also ksquared.
If you are approved for FMLA, you are not required to produce a doctors note after the initial approval. This gives some employees the right to use it at different times, just to use sick time.
There's tons of things FMLA regulates (or allows)
Which is fine, but
I still find it boggling that FMLA is completely unpaid, when you are going to be home with a new baby or taking care of someone with many medical needs - that's exactly the point where you need money.
FMLA is also fairly particular about who you are able to care for during a medical leave, which in my opinion ends up being unfairly strict.
The big deal
This will pay workers for 6 of the 12 weeks. Previously they had to let you have up to 12 weeks under the law, but they didn't have to pay you at all if they didn't want to. They just can't fire you (unless they house it under a downsizing measure) for taking your 12 weeks. This will give these employees paid leave at the various levels over half of the time period they are guaranteed.
Well there is the question.
Some employers make you take all your time (sick/vac/comp) before you can take unpaid leave on FMLA. With the FMLA time start after the first 2 weeks? Can employees use their sick time first or after the 2 weeks?
A good item to add to the Agenda: Boundaries of Wards/Precincts
A good item to add to the Docket would be updating 1924 Boundaries of Boston Wards/Precincts for the current spread of population. It's no longer 1924, it's 2015
http://bostonwardsprecincts.blogspot.com
Ward boundaries
Wards are too young to have babies and parental leave; that's why they're wards. And the people looking out for them should know those boundaries!
Yes and no
Too young for parental leave yes, for babies, sadly no. As OP pointed out it's 2015, not 1924. :)
Exactly
My ward has been to the voting precinct 7 times since being born, 8 if you include the time Mrs. Waquiot walked uphill, both ways, to vote in the state primary when 8 months pregnant. Heck, last November I just let him vote for me. Well, he chose a few, but he was obsessed with voting for "3" for Auditor and "yellow" on question 2.
I remember the 2013 general election. I combined a long walk with voting, so we basically walked the boundaries of our precinct. Those are the days I will cherish.
Um
You do realize that until they went to a completely at large city council in 1951, they changed the wards every so often. That's how the council districts were drawn.
Geez, Don, learn something about your City. Oh, wait...
I assume that property taxes
I assume that property taxes will be raised to pay for this giveaway. Or will tollbooths be set up at the city boundaries to make suburbanites pay for it?