During the 2016 presidential campaign, both Donald Trump andHillary Clinton pledged their support for more paid family leave.Now big business is countering the calls with a proposal of itsown: Congress should establish a certain optional amount of paidleave and, if companies meet that threshold, they should beprotected from state or local laws that might require more.

The proposal was part of a report released Tuesday by the HRPolicy Association, a coalition of more than 380 major U.S.companies. Together, the group's members employ 9% of America'sprivate-sector workers. Executives on the committee behind thereport represent companies including Marriott International,Procter & Gamble, IBM, Cigna, General Electric, Wendy's, Oracleand General Mills.

The preemptive strike from the business community is also aresponse to the increasing number of states and municipalities thathave taken matters into their own hands, passing local laws thatrequire employers to offer paid time off.

Companies that already provide paid leave “should be encouragedto continue to do so,” said Cigna executive vice president JohnMurabito, who serves on the board of the HR Policy Association andon the committee that put together the report. “One clear way ofdoing that would be to provide relief from widely varying state andlocal mandates.”

As of now, federal law offers many employees the opportunity totake unpaid family leave, but doesn't require employers to giveworkers paid time off for sickness or childcare, includingmaternity leave. Since 2011, seven states and dozens of cities havepassed laws requiring companies to provide paid sick days. Anothertwo states and the District of Columbia passed laws creating familyleave funds and requiring companies to let their employees usethem.

In places like California, Arizona, New York City andMinneapolis, new laws let employees accrue at least one hour ofsick time for every 30 hours of work, or roughly one sick day forevery six weeks of full-time work. Nationally about 61% ofprivate-sector workers have access to some form of paid sickdays, according to 2015 data from the Bureau of LaborStatistics. Twelve percent have some form of paid family leave.

In response to the spread of local regulations, conservativesand business groups have pushed state lawmakers to strip cities andtowns of the authority to pass such measures. With the GOP now incontrol of the White House and both houses of Congress, saidUniversity of Michigan law professor Samuel Bagenstos, they havethe chance to preempt states and cities nationwide — a strategythat could establish precedent for other issues.

It would be unusual for Congress to override state or localmandates on pay or benefits, Bagenstos said. Federal employment lawhas generally acted as a floor — establishing national minimumstandards like a $7.25 hourly wage — rather than as a ceiling.

During the campaign, Trump had proposed establishing a federalpolicy that would provide for six weeks of paid maternity leave fornew mothers. The White House didn't respond to requests for commentabout the Administration's paid leave plans, which have not been acentral issue in the first 100 days of the Trump presidency.

Sympathetic Congress

Congressman Bradley Byrne, an Alabama Republican who chairs theWorkforce Protections subcommittee, said he's interested in theidea of a safe harbor. “People move across state lines, companiesoperate across state lines. We've got to bring some uniformity tothis — both for the companies' sake, but more importantly for theemployees' sake as they move around,” he said.

The HR Policy Association says companies don't need governmentregulation to be generous with their workers. “While manyexisting government policies assume employers will only treat theiremployees fairly if they are required by law to do so, the war fortalent negates that assumption,” Merck & Co. executive vicepresident Mirian Graddick-Weir, who chairs the association, said inan email.

Current laws on the books still assume “that employers werelikely to take advantage of employees, so we just need to put lotsof protections in place,” said CIT Group chief human resourcesofficer Jim Duffy. “Now really the shoe is clearly on the otherfoot — the workers really have the leverage.”

Coming from companies that operate in multiplecountries, complaints about the administrative headaches ofcomplying with varying laws are a pretext for firms angling tostanch progress on paid leave, labor advocates say.

“This is creating a 'safe harbor' for the largest corporationsat the expense of financial security for families,” said EllenBravo, founder of the coalition Family Values at Work.

For their part, congressional Democrats have in recent yearsrepeatedly introduced proposals to establish federal minimums forpaid leave, while still allowing states and cities to set their ownhigher standards.

“Because there has been a lack of federal action, you've seencommunities taking this issue into their own hands,” said HeatherBoushey, executive director of the Washington Center for EquitableGrowth. “If the employers are frustrated that they have differentsystems, then we should be thinking about what is that basicbenefit that we should be providing at the federal level.”

That's not an idea the HR Policy Association has embraced. “Ithink that probably feels a little too intrusive for ourmembership,” said Johnna Torsone, executive vice presidentof Pitney Bowes, who worked on the report and chairs theassociation's Employment Rights Committee. Offering a safe harbor,she said, “feels more amenable” to industry leaders.

Pitney Bowes says it provides its staff with up to six paid sickdays a year and eight weeks of fully-paid family leave, along withvacation.

“The question is,” said Torsone, “if you've provided a certainlevel of paid leave within your structure, should you be subjectedto 30 different approaches to this and have to monitor it?”

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