The 2016 budget bill (S.B. 6406C) signed into law on April 4 by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo includes a paid family leave program that will provide partially-paid leave to nearly every employee in the state. New York is the fourth state, following California,New Jersey and Rhode Island, to enact a paid family leave program administered as part of the state disability insurance program.
New York’s new statewide program of paid family leave is the most comprehensive in the nation and will particularly benefit low-income workers, according to a statement from Cuomo’s office. Such workers often do not have benefits or job security, he explained, and access to leave often is unavailable or, in the case of unpaid leave, cost-prohibitive. Cuomo said that the new policy will help low-wage workers and their families “climb the ladder of opportunity” and provide a better future for all New Yorkers.
Paid Leave Provisions
When fully implemented, eligible employees will receive up to 12 weeks of leave to bond with a newborn infant or a child newly placed for fostering or adoption, to care for a family member with a serious health condition, or because of a qualifying exigency related to a family member’s service in the military. Employees must have worked for an employer for 26 or more consecutive weeks to be eligible for family leave benefits.
Paid benefits will be phased in. Beginning in 2018, eligible employees will be paid 50 percent of their average weekly wage, up to a maximum of 50 percent of the statewide average weekly wage, for no more than eight weeks during a 52-week period; in 2019, benefits will be paid for up to 10 weeks and equal 55 percent of an employee’s average weekly wage, not to exceed 55 percent of the state-wide average weekly wage. The benefits increase each year and when fully implemented in 2021 will be 67 percent of an employee’s average weekly wage, capped at 67 percent of the statewide average weekly wage, for up to 12 weeks.
Unlike the other states with paid family leave programs, New York’s program will be funded entirely by employees. Covered employees will have withheld from their pay an assessment of no more than 0.5 percent of their weekly wages, not to exceed 60 cents per week — the same amount withheld for the state’s disability benefits program.
Job and Benefits Protections
The new law provides job and benefits protections for employees who take paid family leave. The same prohibitions and penalties against employers that retaliate or discriminate against an employee for exercising workers’ compensation or disability benefits rights, will apply regarding employees who exercise their rights under the paid family leave law.
Employees who take paid family leave are entitled to be reinstated into their previous positions, or be restored by their employer to a comparable position with comparable employment benefits, pay and other terms and conditions of employment. Employees also retain their rights to any benefits they accrued before their paid family leave began, and employers must maintain employees’ existing health benefits.
Employers may offer an employee at the start of his or her paid family leave the option of using accrued vacation or personal time and receiving their full pay during all or a part of the family leave. An employer that provides full salary under this provision to an employee on family leave may be reimbursed by the paid family leave program for the amount of benefits that would have been due to the employee.
Employers’ Concerns
Paid leave legislation often is opposed by the business community because these programs impose costs and regulations on employers to provide such benefits. Even though, in this case, New York’s paid family leave program is funded entirely through employee contributions, it shouldn’t be assumed that employers are not resistant to the law, according to Jeff Nowak, a partner at Franczek Radelet’s Chicago office and editorial advisory board member of Thompson’s Family and Medical Leave Handbook
The business community still opposes New York’s new law, points out Nowak in his FMLA Insights blog, because employers argue that they will end up with higher overtime and training expenses for employees who need to cover for co-workers who are on leave. “Businesses also are rightly concerned about how much control they’ll have over employees taking leave under these state administered programs,” says Nowak.
However, State Sen. Jeffrey Klein (D.-34th District), who supports the new program, said in a press release, “New York State put together the best Paid Family Leave policy in the nation. Nobody will ever have to choose between what their heart tells them to do and what their bank account allows them to do.”