Paid leave feedback tour kicks off

Representatives from the Southwest Women’s Law Center kicked off a 10-city tour in Clovis Tuesday with an eye toward garnering feedback regarding statewide paid leave.

The SWLC has taken up the cause since late 2014, when it pushed for legislation that would allow for a committee to study the issue. That committee was approved in the 2015 legislative session under House Memorial 2, with an Oct. 1 deadline to report back to the legislature and share findings.

“What happens when individuals have to take care of an aging or elderly parent?” asked Southwest Women’s Law Center Director Pamelya Herndon, who was joined by SWLC staff attorney Sarah Coffey at the gathering at the Clovis-Carver Library. “What happens if you want to adopt a child, if you’re having a child for the first time or want to become a foster parent? Ideally, you would like to be able to spend time with the children in those instances to create a great bonding experience.

“With respect to taking care of relatives, you can’t be off work without money. So, we’re looking into ways to create a paid leave policy so people could be off work for some period of time.”

Herndon said the committee’s intent is to talk with businesses, employees and individuals about how much time they would need off, what they would be willing to pay for such an opportunity, which agency should be handling the leave process and how much compensation a participant should receive when off.

Coffey said four states — California, Rhode Island, New Jersey and New York — have passed and are instituting paid leave laws. Washington state has passed such an act, but is working out funding.

“What we wanted to do was get an idea with regard to what paid leave laws had been passed in other states,” Coffey said. “Both California and New Jersey allow for six weeks of paid leave, Rhode Island is four weeks and New York just passed a law for 12 weeks of paid leave. The states reimburse at different levels. California looks at your annual salary and pays 55 percent of what you make in a normal week.

“Here there would be a fund collected and a small percentage of an employees pay would be put into this fund and people would be able to apply for this leave and the state would provide the reimbursement. It would not be the employer.”

Clovis resident Leroy Green gave the proposal a thumbs up.

“This is definitely needed,” he said. “I’m strongly in favor of it and will do my part to spread the word throughout the community. I’m glad I came out to hear the message.”

Herndon said a prime benefit of paid leave is it strengthens the employee-employer relationship.

“What we have learned is that this builds loyalty among employees,” she said. “They know they can go out for a period of time and receive at least a portion of their salary. We still have a lot of work to do to figure out what we will be actually presenting to the Legislature.”

In October the panel will deliver its findings to the Health and Human Services legislative committee and will make additional tour stops in Las Cruces, Farmington, Gallup, Santa Fe, Silver City and Albuquerque, among other venues.