First-of-Its-Kind Scorecard Evaluates Congress Members on Their Support of Paid Leave Policies
/The evaluation by Paid Leave for All Action and the National Partnership for Women & Families Action Fund highlights 38 Senators and 206 Representatives who’ve consistently voted and co-sponsored paid leave legislation.
Washington, D.C. — A new scorecard from Paid Leave for All Action and the National Partnership for Women & Families Action Fund highlights where members of Congress stand on recent legislation critical to enacting a national paid leave program — Build Back Better, the FAMILY Act, and the Job Protection Act. The scorecard comes amid a growing number of indicators that paid leave could play a decisive role in battleground midterm races.
Overall, six Senators and 62 Representatives were given the highest rating of “Paid Leave Champion,” while an additional 32 Senators and 44 Representatives were rated as “Paid Leave Supporters.” These evaluations come on the heels of moments where policymakers have come tantalizingly close to the passage of a federal paid leave policy. And recent polling from groups such as Navigator and Global Strategy Group have confirmed ahead of November’s midterms and the start of the next Congress that voters are overwhelmingly in favor of such a policy, with Navigator finding that four-in-five Americans support paid family and medical leave policies and GSG finding that 81 percent of battleground voters support paid leave across Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
“Paid leave is one of the top issues of unfinished businesses for Congress,” said Lelaine Bigelow, Campaign Director, National Partnership for Women & Families Action Fund. “This scorecard is an important tool for the American people to find who is fighting for paid leave and how they can work to get it passed in the next Congress.”
“We’ve made more progress toward securing paid leave than ever before in the last few years, thanks to relentless work from so many advocates, partners, and our growing bench of champions in Congress,” said Dawn Huckelbridge, Director of Paid Leave for All Action. “The polling shows that voters across the nation want paid leave to get over the finish line in Congress. We want Members of Congress to know that families all across the country see where they stand on this critical issue — and that we’re counting on them to continue pushing for paid leave in the months ahead.”
The votes that this scorecard considered are:
House passage of the Build Back Better Act (H.R. 5376), which included the first-ever universal paid family and medical leave program that, if enacted, would have provided this critical benefit to the millions of Americans who currently lack it.
The bill co-sponsorships that this scorecard considered are:
The FAMILY Act (H.R. 804/S. 248), which would create a universal paid family and medical leave program providing 12 weeks of paid leave to virtually all workers across the country.
The Job Protection Act (H.R. 6938/S. 3748), which would expand access to job-protected leave under the FMLA to the millions of people who work for small businesses or part-time or seasonal jobs, and are thus left out from the FMLA protections. This is a critical companion to the FAMILY Act to make sure that once people have access to paid leave, they aren’t fired for taking it.
More details are available here.
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