San Francisco passes nation's most generous family leave law

SAN FRANCISCO — San Francisco on Tuesday became the first city in the country to require employers to offer six weeks of fully paid leave for new parents.

The unanimous vote by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors comes a day after New York passed a law requiring up to 12 weeks of partially paid time off for new parents that it funded through a weekly payroll tax.

California already has one of the more expansive laws in the country, requiring that employees receive 55% of their wages for up to six weeks of paid family leave.

The San Francisco ordinance would require businesses with more than 20 employees to plug that gap by paying the remaining 45% of their employees’ wages. It applies to parents of either genders and to both full- and part-time employees who work in the city. The law takes effect January 2017 with a gradual phase in for smaller businesses. Businesses with 35 employees or more must comply by July 1, 2017.  Businesses with 20 or more employees have until January 2018.

“Our country’s parental leave policies are woefully behind the rest of the world, and today San Francisco has taken the lead in pushing for better family leave policies for our workers,” the bill's author, Supervisor Scott Wiener, said in a statement after the vote. “We shouldn’t be forcing new mothers and fathers to choose between spending precious bonding time with their children and putting food on the table."

The legislation aims to help low wage workers who often cannot afford to take a pay cut at the same time they are coping with the additional expenses of a new baby, he said.

“These workers are the least likely to have access to employer-provided paid parental leave and they struggle the most with taking a pay cut to stay at home and bond with their child,” Wiener said.

Since California implemented its paid family leave law in 2004, higher income workers have been most likely to take advantage of it, said Jenya Cassidy, director of the California Work & Family Coalition.

Tech companies in the San Francisco area, such as Twitter, Facebook and Google, offer fully paid parental leave for up to 20 weeks. Netflix made news last year when it announced “unlimited” maternity or paternity leave for the first year after a child's birth.

“How do we make it more accessible and  more equitable for lower-income workers? We’re hoping something like this would go a long way towards bridging that gap,” she said.

The proposal got a mixed reception from San Francisco's business community.

The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce took a neutral stance on the legislation. The chamber supports expanded parental leave, but said its 2,4000 small business members may find it challenging to meet the financial requirements.

"It’s already a struggle in San Francisco because there’s so many mandates placed on businesses and the city doesn’t differentiate between small and big business,” said Dee Dee Workman, the chamber's vice president of public policy.

San Francisco’s Office of Economic Analysis found the ordinance would likely increase household spending, but that it could also “increase the cost of hiring, slow job creation and replacement.” If both men and women took up the benefits, it could cost San Francisco businesses about $32.3 million annually, the office estimated.

“We’re stuck in a position. If we don’t support it, you’re the bad guys,” said Henry Karnilowicz, president of the San Francisco Council of District Merchants Associations, which has about 4,000 members. He called the city proposal “unfair.”

Karnilowicz said new parents can already take a disability leave and six weeks of partially paid parental leave covered by the state. “It’s something that we feel we already have all these other things, having leave and all that. It’s another burden we don’t need,” he said.

In his last State of the Union address, President Barack Obama chastised Congress for failing to enact a law requiring such leave. "We’re the only advanced country on Earth that doesn’t guarantee paid sick leave or paid maternity leave to our workers.”

In addition to New York and California, New Jersey and Rhode Island have also enacted laws requiring paid leave for new parents.