Paid Leave and Racial Justice: The Workplace Equalizer Americans Deserve

The United States practically stands alone in the distinction that this country, one of the wealthiest in the world, doesn’t offer federally mandated paid leave to its 155 million employed citizens. In contrast , of the 193 United Nations countries, only a handful of countries don’t provide paid leave: New Guinea, Suriname, a few islands in the South Pacific, and, of course, the United States. The closest that the country has come to catching up with the rest of the world is through the Family and Medical Leave Act , passed in 1993, which granted 12 weeks of federal, job-protected, but unpaid leave to eligible private and federal workers. There are very real upsides to this legislation: It gives millions of American workers job-protected federal leave , not just for the birth of a child, but also for medical events of their own, to caretake for others, or to adjust to the adoption of a child. Still, this is unpaid leave. Even then, it doesn’t cover every worker in the United States. Employers required to offer FMLA have to employ 50 or more employees within a 75-mile radius of the worksite, an employee must have been employed for at least a year to be eligible, and must have worked at least 1,250 hours to be eligible. In other words, the FMLA is not a true national paid leave policy, and millions get left behind because of it. “It was predictable that women and people of color would be left behind [from the FMLA],” says Erika Moritsugu, the Vice President for Congressional Re…