Skip to main content

Senator Marco Rubio & Ivanka Trump Push New Paid Leave Proposal


For readers that watched President Donald Trump's State of the Union last week, you might have caught the brief reference by the President in regard to his support of a nationwide paid leave bill.  Perhaps wanting to strike while the iron is hot, Florida Senator Marco Rubio has started to make waves recently with his work on a new paid leave proposal alongside Ivanka Trump.  (Readers might remember that Ivanka Trump has been eyeing a paid leave proposal for some time now.)  While still in the early stages and without much of a draft of a proposed bill, this proposal is somewhat innovative in that it would allow workers to dip into their Social Security benefits when they want to take time off to care for a new child or take care of a sick family member.  I will let you read that last sentence again.  This proposal would let workers use paid leave by "borrowing" from their Social Security benefits.

Let us use an example to better illustrate this proposal:  A worker takes 6 weeks of paid leave by "borrowing" from their Social Security benefits.  As a result, when that worker would be able to receive full Social Security benefits at 67 years old, he/she would not be able to actually receive their Social Security benefits until 6 weeks after his/her 67th birthday.  In essence, this is akin to robbing Peter to pay Paul.  

The concern that many have with this proposal, myself included, is what kind of limits would actually be placed on this proposal.  How often could workers actually "borrow" from their Social Security benefits?  Would there be a restriction on the total number of benefits that could actually be borrowed each month/year?  It is not hard to imagine this spiraling out of control with workers continuing to borrow against their Social Security benefits so often that they inevitably delay their right to receive Social Security benefits for months or years.

New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has emerged as an early critic of this paid leave proposal (although I caution readers that without actual language in a proposed piece of legislation, it might be too early to bring out the knives for this proposal).  Senator Gillibrand has argued that under Rubio and Trump's proposal, Social Security would be unjustly weakened and harm low income workers, seniors, and women.  In an effort to offer a counter proposal, Senator Gillibrand has proposed a plan that would offer workers up to 12 weeks of paid leave after the birth of a child or to care for a sick family member.  This proposal would be funded by employers and employees both paying .2% of the employee's wages to fund the program.

I think it is too uncertain whether either of these proposals can garner enough support to actually become law.  Republicans do not have as much of an appetite for paid leave (compared to Democrats), but Republicans are hungry for another legislative victory.  Could a proposal by the President's daughter find enough support among Republicans (who control both houses of Congress) to actually result in the bill's passage?  Stay tuned.


For additional information on Rubio and Trump's proposal:  https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/04/rubio-ivanka-trump-family-leave-385050

For additional information on Gillibrand's proposal:  http://auburnpub.com/blogs/eye_on_ny/gillibrand-gop-paid-leave-plan-would-weaken-social-security/article_66db742a-0c15-11e8-b3cf-e3021ecd0fa5.html
 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

NLRB: Discussion Among Employees About Tip Pooling is Protected Concerted Activity

  This Advice Memorandum from the National Labor Relations Board’s Associate General Counsel, Jayme Sophir, addressed whether employees which discussed and complained about tip pooling at work constituted protected concerted activity. In relevant part, an employer in New York operated a chain of steakhouses.  While tip pooling was in place at these steakhouses, some of the employees objected to it on the grounds that it was not transparent and improperly divided tips among the workers.  Employees were told not to complain or talk to each other about the tip pool and were told that doing so would endanger their jobs.  Despite the employer later attempting to provide some clarity as to how the tips were being divided, rancor still existed among some employees.  At one point, the employees were told by a general manager that some employees that had been talking about the tip pool were “cleared out” and the employer would continue to do so. In the Advice Memorandum, it was noted that emplo
Post a Comment
Read more

What I’ve Been Reading This Week

A few years ago, I remember when the “Fight for $15” movement was taking off around the country.  Lo and behold, it appears that a $15/hour minimum wage is not the stopping point, which should be no surprise.  As the below article notes, New York is aggressively moving to ramp up hourly wage rates even higher.  While all the  below articles are worth a read, I called particular attention to that one. As always, below are a couple article that caught my eye this week. Disney World Workers Reject Latest Contract Offer Late last week, it was announced that workers at Disney World had rejected the most recent contract offer from the company, calling on their employer to do better.  As Brooks Barnes at The New York Times writes, the unions that represent about 32,000 workers at Disney World reported their members resoundingly rejected the 5 year contract offer which would have seen workers receive a 10% raise and retroactive increased back pay.  While Disney’s offer would have increased pa
Post a Comment
Read more

Utah Non-Compete Bill Falters in House

Last month, a non-compete bill sponsored by Representative Brian Greene (Republican from Pleasant Grove) & up for vote in the Utah House failed to make it through the Legislature.  The bill sought to ban enforcement of non-competes if they came after a worker was already employed, given no compensation (such as a bonus or promotion) for signing the non-compete, and laid off within six months.  However, by a 22 - 49 vote, the bill was resoundingly defeated after some business groups lobbied to kill the non-compete bill.  One group in particular, The Free Enterprise Utah coalition, argued that the Utah State Legislature should hold off on any changes to non compete laws in the state until a survey about non competes was done among Utah businesses.  Representative Greene had countered this claim and argued that a survey was not needed to show that the current non compete laws in the states allowed many businesses, including some small high tech companies in the state, to per
Post a Comment
Read more