Obama's Paid Family Leave Push Renewed for More Workers

President Barack Obama outlined a plan to secure paid family leave, sick leave, and maternity leave for working people on Thursday.

Obama is proposing "big changes," Time reported, including giving federal employees six weeks of paid leave after a child is born and pushing for passage of the Healthy Families Act, which lets workers earn sick leave while they work.

"Forty-three million Americans do not get paid sick leave," the New York Daily News quoted Obama as saying after the president discussed the challenges of work and family with women at a Baltimore café. "It’s a pretty astonishing statistic."

Obama is asking for $2 billion to help states create paid leave programs, the Daily News said, and plans will be released in February for raising that money.

Time pointed out that the U.S. falls significantly behind other countries in the amount of leave offered to the parents of newborns. The president already signed a memorandum that allows federal employees six weeks of paid leave when a child is born, but Obama wants to extend that to private employers.

"The United Nation’s International Labor Organization surveyed family leave policies in 185 countries or territories around the world," Time wrote. "Only two nations did not offer paid maternity leave: the United States, and Papua New Guinea."

Obama’s senior advisor, Valerie Jarrett, posted an article on LinkedIn on Thursday on why Obama believes paid leave is important.

"The truth is, the success and productivity of our workers is inextricably tied to their ability to care for their families and maintain a stable life at home," Jarrett wrote. "More and more employers are coming to understand this. And voters get it too — from Massachusetts to Oakland, they have been showing their overwhelming bipartisan support for policies allowing workers to earn paid sick days."

Fox News reported that the Healthy Families Act has been lingering, unpassed, since 2008.

"The chances that lawmakers will send (Connecticut Rep. Rosa) DeLauro's bill to Obama in the next two years appear slim to none, given that the congresswoman first introduced the bill a decade ago," Fox wrote.

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