20,000 signatures reached
To: Biden administration and Congressional leadership
It's time to #PassPaidLeave for all!
We ask that you prioritize a paid family and medical leave program in the United States, and that you publicly commit to its passage this Congress. It will save jobs, save lives, and make our families and our nation stronger.
Thirty years ago Congress passed the Family and Medical Leave Act to ensure unpaid leave for workers in America. This was meant to be a first step. Today we ask you to commit to passing the country's first permanent paid leave program. It's way past time for the paid leave every working person and family deserves.
Paid leave is also one of the most widely supported policies in this country. Two-thirds of small businesses want a national paid leave program to support their workers. Four in five American voters support it. In red states and blue, battlegrounds and beyond, supermajorities of voters want paid leave passed now. This is not a partisan issue. This is about family values.
Why is this important?
The United States is one of only six remaining countries in the world with no guaranteed form of paid leave. Just 25 percent of workers in the entire country have access to paid family leave through their jobs. And here in America, one in four people who have given birth returned to work within two weeks—bleeding, sleep-deprived, and often still injured.
There is a human cost to the lack of paid leave, and families are paying for it. Women and caregivers lift up our economy, which also disproportionately relies on the undervalued labor of women of color.
Passing paid leave and care policies would yield millions of jobs, billions in wages, and trillions in GDP. It would reduce turnover costs, retain talented workers, and allow employers and small businesses to be more competitive. It would keep working people in their jobs and families afloat.