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Friday, October 11, 2019
Expanding the FMLA in CAlifornia Essay -- essays research papers
Problem Identification Every day in California, working men and women face conflicts between their work responsibilities and their families. In order to work they must make arrangements for their children and elderly family members who need assistance. They address these conflicts through a variety of child-care, after-school, and eldercare arrangements. But sometimes when a child is seriously ill, an aging parent’s health deteriorates suddenly, or a baby is born or adopted, these daily arrangements are no longer adequate. At such times of family need, an employee simply must take time off from work because no alternative care arrangements will do. That is why in 1993, Congress passed the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), which was the first national policy designed to help working people balance their work and family responsibilities. It guarantees that people who work for companies with more than 50 employees can take up to 12 weeks’ unpaid leave a year to care for a newborn or newly-ado pted child or for certain seriously ill family members, or to recover from their own serious health conditions. Unfortunately, taking unpaid family leave is a luxury most Californians can not afford, so new mandates must be instituted to help insure that our state’s families can have a healthy and affordable balance between work and family responsibilities. Many groups have different views on how this issue should be resolved and that is why I have chosen to use the group theory to explain this problem. There are three workable resolutions that I have chosen to discuss; expanding the FMLA to cover businesses with 25-49 employees, expanding the use of sick leave, and expanding the State Temporary Disability Insurance (TDI) Program to provide partial wage replacement to employees who are on parental leave. Search For Solutions The first possible solution was formed when it came to public attention that many caregivers couldn’t afford to take unpaid family leave due to the laws restrictions. In a national survey it was discovered that nearly two-thirds of employees who needed but did not take family or medical leave because they could not afford it. In addition, almost one in ten FMLA leave-takers was forced to turn to public assistance to help cover the wages they lost as a result of taking family or medical leave. As if the unpaid restrictions weren’t enough, it tu... ...on(actual 1990 expenditure) Number of Employees Covered by TDI     11.1 million (1989) Eligibility Requirements for New Benefits     Employees must be eligible for state disability insurance Length of Absence Covered     12 weeks Purposes of Absence Covered      · Care for newborn or newly adopted children · Care for ill parents, children or spouses Estimated Number of Leave-takers Likely to Use New Benefits     619,250 Average Weekly Benefit     $102.82-193.57 Estimated Length of Leave     5-10 weeks Estimated Total Annual Cost of Expanding TDI to Include Family Leave     $835 million New Cost as a Percentage of Total Program     34 percent Average Cost Per Covered Worker     $6.27 / month$1.45 / week      So by reviewing the data it seems probable that expanding the SDI to include family leave would be a feasible and logical solution that most Californians and politicians would stand behind and implement.
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