The state House on Friday passed a significantly scaled-down paid family leave measure, which would provide five weeks of paid leave to care for a new child.
Lawmakers also created a task force to figure out how to pay for the program.
The measure, which passed the House 62-35, now must go back to the Senate, where it passed last month with much broader language. House and Senate leaders will need to resolve the differences before the measure is forwarded to Gov. Chris Gregoire.
“No one should have to choose between the job that they need and the baby that they love,” said Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson, D-Seattle. “But that is exactly the choice that is facing far too many people in Washington today. It’s time for us to join virtually every other country in the world, by helping parents be with their newborns and their adopted children.”
Under the bill, starting in 2009, workers would get $250 a week for up to five weeks to care for a newborn or a newly adopted child. But a 2-cent-an-hour tax that was supposed to be taken from employees’ pay to cover the program was removed from the legislation. Instead, a new 13-member task force – including lawmakers, business representatives and others – would study how to finance the program. The task force must report its findings to the Legislature by Jan. 1.
Supporters have been trying to get paid family leave through the Legislature since 2001. Two years ago, it passed the Senate but got stopped in the House.
A coalition of mothers and their supporters has given the measure momentum this year, sending nearly 8,000 e-mails to lawmakers since the legislative session began in January and conducting rallies at the Capitol.
The version that passed out of the Senate would have also allowed workers to use the time to care for a seriously ill parent, but that language was removed in the House. Also removed by House Democrats was allowing the weekly payment of $250 to rise yearly with inflation.
Several Republican amendments failed, including one that would have created a task force to study the issue.
One Republican amendment that did pass increased Republican and business participation in the task force.The watering down of the bill came, in large part, because of stiff opposition from business groups. The House Appropriations Committee passed the Senate bill out to keep it alive last month, but stripped out all the details.
Since then, the bill’s Senate sponsor, Sen. Karen Keiser, D-Kent, has been working with Dickerson, as well as consulting with family leave advocates and opponents to try and find a compromise.
Rep. Steve Conway, D-Tacoma, said the bill was advancing the “balance of work and family.”
Business groups, while happy with the acceptance of the Republican amendment on the task force, still had concerns.
Setting up the program before determining how to pay for it “is a case of shoot first, aim later,” said Kris Tefft, general counsel for the Association of Washington Business.
The measure would require employers to hold workers’ jobs open while they are on leave, but an amendment would exempt those with less than 25 workers.
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