US President Joe Biden played host to former president Bill Clinton on Thursday to mark the 30th anniversary of the Family and Medical Leave Act, the first piece of legislation that the 42nd president signed into law after taking office in 1993.
Mr Biden and Mr Clinton took part in an event at the White House to put the spotlight on legislation that guaranteed many American workers up to 12 unpaid weeks off to recover from major illness or childbirth or to take care of sick family members. Mr Clinton signed the bill into law on February 5, 1993.
The current president championed but failed to win support for paid leave for workers in 2021. On Thursday, he signed a memorandum that calls on heads of federal agencies to support access to unpaid family and medical leave for federal workers in their first year on the job.
Workers are not entitled to unpaid leave under the law until they have been employed for a year.
He is also directing the Office of Personnel Management to provide recommendations on developing policies so workers can get paid and unpaid leave to seek safety or recover from domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault or stalking. Such situations are not covered by the family leave law.
“This event is a moment to recognise the difference that the Family and Medical Leave Act has made and continues to make for millions of Americans,” said Jen Klein, the White House director of gender policy.
Early in 2021, Mr Biden proposed vastly expanding the family leave law to give workers up to 12 weeks of paid parental, family and personal illness leave and to ensure workers get three days of bereavement leave per year as part of a massive $3.5 trillion social spending plan.
His plan called for providing workers up to $4,000 a month, with a minimum of two thirds of average weekly wages replaced. The White House estimated the programme would cost more than $225 billion over a decade.
Paid family leave did not make it into the slimmed-down climate and healthcare legislation that Mr Biden signed into law in August.
A group of Democratic members of Congress have announced they would reintroduce legislation to establish paid family leave and other updates to the law.
But passing legislation to establish the paid leave programme will be an uphill climb for Mr Biden with Republicans now in control of the House of Representatives. Kirsten Gillibrand, a US senator who has been pushing to update the federal law, said that she has engaged Republicans on the issue.
“We are going to find what common ground exists in both the House and Senate and see if there’s some measure of paid leave that can be done with the Republican House,” she said.
The current federal leave law does not apply to a large part of the US workforce.
About 44 per cent of workers are not eligible for FMLA-supported leave because they work for small employers exempt from the law, do not work enough hours or have not worked for their employer long enough to be eligible or both, according to the National Partnership for Women and Families, a group advocating updating the law.
About 15 million workers used FMLA in 2022, according to the group.
