Did you know that every country in the entire world except The United States and Papua New Guinea have a paid family leave program? What a paid family leave law does is it allows for parents of new born children, or adopted, to stay home for a certain amount of time while getting paid by their employer. In the US there are three states with this law in place, California, New Jersey, and Rhode Island. California has shown so many positive outcomes that every state should be looking towards as an example.
For the program to work in California employees are only paying on average $2 more in taxes per week. And employers are seeing fewer turnovers with their employees. People want to work for companies that offer this benefit. California is giving employees six weeks of paid leave out of a twelve week leave period which mothers and fathers both have the option of using. There have been many positive out comes from the program and little to no negative effects have been recorded within the state of California.
So we come to the question, why doesn’t the state of Washington have a benefit such as paid family leave available for those who life there? The only excuse is that the state doesn’t have enough money to put the plan into place. But this is not a good excuse because other states are on their way to positive change for the new families out there, allowing bonding time for new parents and children. If you think the state of Washington should work a little harder to pass a paid family leave law then sign this petition!
