Statement of Administration Policy: S. 2488 - Parental and Medical Leave Act of 1988

(Senate)
(Dodd (D) CT and 28 others)

The Administration supports and encourages parental and medical leave policies that meet the needs of individual companies and their employees. Employees and employers — not the Federal Government — are in the best position to judge their own needs.

Consistent with this belief, the Administration would support a proposal for parental leave which encourages employers and employees to agree on the leave policy best suited to them.

The American workforce is changing. Women, in particular, are becoming a larger part of the workforce. Employers increasingly recognize this and are making the necessary changes to their personnel policies. Thus far, employers and employees have chosen freely to establish a wide variety of benefit options tailored to their particular needs. Businesses spend approximately 40% of their payroll dollars on employee benefits. Of those expenditures, only 9% are the result of laws mandating benefits. The remaining 91% of expenditures are for benefits resulting from the free economic choices of employers and employees. What is required is for the Federal Government to further this wholesome trend and allow the private sector to make the needed accommodations.

The Administration would support a bill that promotes the adjustment of work/family conflicts by providing incentives to employers to provide leave to their employees during reasonable periods at the birth or adoption of a child.

The President's senior advisers would, however, recommend that he veto S. 2488 because its mandatory uniform leave policy:

— eliminates the flexibility necessary to meet the needs of a changing workforce and undermines the current trend toward flexible benefit policies;

— reduces overall employee benefits; employees might lose, for example, their company dental benefits coverage or company college tuition assistance if their company cannot afford to pay them and new parental and medical leave benefits;

— restricts the freedom of employees and employers to choose leave policies to suit their particular need;

— imposes all of the costs of parental leave mandatorily on employers regardless of their ability to absorb such costs - thus reducing their productivity and U.S. competitiveness;

— devastates many small businesses because they cannot afford to have key employees absent for a substantial period of time;

— discriminates against women; rather than encouraging employers to hire women, the bill encourages employers not to hire them;

— creates new and costly federal bureaucracy to administer and enforce its requirements;

— permits judicial proceedings in which employees, employers and the Secretary of Labor can sue each other in Federal Court based on allegations of non-compliance with the bill's requirements;

— establishes a new program of medical and parental leave for Federal employees, who already benefit from one of the Nation's most generous leave and benefit packages; and

— sets-up a new federal advisbry commission to spend taxpayers' money, this one to last 2 years to study and report to Congress on parental and medical leave policies.