On Monday, December 21, 2015, Mayor Bill De Blasio announced that he will be signing an executive order allowing for up to 12 weeks of paid family leave for new parents. This will be a huge boon to newborn and young parents beginning to expand their family with children. As a newly-married individual, I am paying attention to new laws like this since it is possible I will soon benefit from them. I recently learned about the Federal Family and Medical Leave Act, a law put into place in 1993 to allow for up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave for certain medical and family-related situations. While the order De Blasio plans to sign would not provide benefits for medical needs other than newborns, it would provide money for those who cannot afford to take off the time otherwise.
While you can see this is not the best in comparison to other countries in the world, it is progress, and so I am glad to see it taking shape.
While you can see this is not the best in comparison to other countries in the world, it is progress, and so I am glad to see it taking shape.
The one question now is how will this play out for City Employees that have contracts negotiated through collective bargaining agreements. When I saw the article explaining this new policy I immediately got excited but before I share it with my staff in my new role as Union Representative, I needed to make sure we would benefit from it. Apparently, the De Blasio administration is already in talks with the United Federation of Teachers for how to incorporate this into our contract, since it will last until 2022. We will see how those talks shake out.
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