Earlier this week, Chamber board chair Bruce Stidworthy spoke to KOB-TV 4 about the GACC’s position on two paid family and medical leave proposals up for debate this legislative session.
The first one is familiar: a mandate of up to 12 weeks of paid leave annually, funded partially with a burdensome tax on the employer. The Chamber joined with many businesses from across the state, especially smaller employers that can’t easily adapt to losing one or more workers annually, to help defeat the bill last year.
That proposal has returned this session in two bills, Senate Bill 3 and House Bill 6. The program the bills put forward is functionally the same in its disruptive and costly impact on business – and the solvency issue raised in the bill’s fiscal analysis hasn’t adequately been addressed either. In a word, we don’t feel SB 3 and HB 6 are different enough from last year’s proposed mandate to enable the business community to support them.
But HB 11, sponsored by Representative Marian Matthews (D-Bernalillo), offers an alternative. This bill puts forward a paid leave program that would be less disruptive to businesses because it proposes a shorter maximum amount of leave, encourages employees to take the leave all at once, and the uses for the leave are narrower and more predictable, while still being valuable to workers. It would also be less costly for businesses, because there’s no mandated employer contribution – the program runs on employee contributions only.
As Stidworthy explained in his interview with KOB, “I would say that this new bill is undeniably much better for business, and we are able to support it.”
To read the full story, click here.
For more detail on the two paid leave proposals and why we favor HB 11, click here.