Susan's Blog  
(Occasional comments by Susan Seitel)

April 7, 2008

The New Jersey Senate gave final approval to legislation Monday to allow workers to take up to six weeks of paid time off to care for a sick family member or new baby, positioning New Jersey to become the third state to enact a paid family leave program. The Governor has said he will sign it. Under the bill, workers would fund the paid family leave program by paying about 75 cents a week more into the existing state Temporary Disability Insurance fund through payroll deductions. It translates into about $35 per year. Those who use paid family leave would get two-thirds pay, up to $524 per week. This makes New Jersey the third state to enact paid leave legislation after California and Washington, but Washington hasn't yet figured out how to pay for theirs. New Jersey workers will be able to take leave beginning in July of 2009.

April 6, 2008

We're considering developing an e-training that would help employers – their HR people, managers and supervisors – learn about family responsibilities discrimination, and by learning, protect themselves from lawsuits. FRD, as it's called in the trade, is employment discrimination against workers who have family responsibilities – pregnant women, mothers and fathers of young children, employees with aging parents or sick spouses or partners. They may be rejected for employment, demoted, harassed, passed over for promotion, or terminated – despite good performance evaluations – just because their employers make personnel decisions based on stereotypical notions of how they will or should act. The UC Hastings Center for Work-Life Law offers some examples:

• firing pregnant employees or telling them to get an abortion if they wish to remain employed;
• giving promotions to less qualified fathers or women without children rather than to highly qualified mothers;
• developed hiring profiles that expressly excluded women with young children;
• terminating employees without a valid business reason when they return from maternity or paternity leave;
• giving parents work schedules that they cannot meet for childcare reasons while giving non-parents different schedules; and
• fabricating work infractions or performance deficiencies to justify dismissal of employees with family responsibilities.

We'd be interested in knowing whether this kind of training might be valuable for you. Let us know by e-mailing me, Susan@WFCResources.com, or just click here to comment..

April 2, 2008 – Two flexibility reports offer suggestions, tips and best practices

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