New Jersey Policy Perspective Vice President Jon Whiten yesterday joined Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto and partners from New Jersey Citizen Action, the AFL-CIO, AARP of New Jersey, the Main Street Alliance and others to push New Jersey to adopt sensible improvements to the state’s trailblazing paid family leave program – and NJTV was there to file this report.
As NJPP’s in-depth analysis released last month found, paid leave is a huge asset to the state of New Jersey – helping its workers, families, businesses and economy – yet it is woefully underutilized. The chief reasons are terribly inadequate wage replacements for leave-takers, and a lack of job-protected leave for 1 in 3 New Jersey workers.
“For low-income working families, who already struggle to get by in high-cost New Jersey, losing a third of your take home pay is often out of the question,” Whiten explained of the weak wage replacements. “Meanwhile, an artificially low cap on wage replacements of $633 a week means that middle-class workers are faced with the prospect of losing more than a third of their wages, an unrealistic proposition for the many middle-class families who essentially live paycheck to paycheck in our state.”
Legislation introduced yesterday by the Speaker would – like legislation introduced earlier this year by Senate President Steve Sweeney – make great strides toward improving paid leave and helping ensure more New Jersey families can use this important social insurance benefit.
Full video via the Assembly Democrats:
