Small businesses support a national paid family & medical leave program

Publisher: 
Small Business Majority
Date: 
Thursday, October 24, 2024

Small business owners know it makes good business sense to care for their employees, and they also genuinely care for the people who work for them. However, they often struggle to provide key benefits, including paid family and medical leave, which they believe would help them recruit and retain their workers. With small businesses struggling to compete with large companies that can offer attractive benefits packages, it should come as no surprise that small business owners support establishing a universal paid family and medical leave program that would make it easier for them to facilitate their employees’ access to      the paid time off they need to support their families while keeping their jobs.

A new national scientific opinion poll conducted for Small Business Majority and the National Partnership for Women & Families by Lake Research Partners found that 79% of small business owners support the creation of a national paid family and medical leave program that would guarantee employees wage replacement for up to 12 weeks, funded by 0.5% employer and employee contributions each. The leave could be for welcoming a new child (born or adopted), or a serious health condition or injury for an employee or a family member. This would allow employees to take time away from work for their own serious illness, to care for a seriously ill family member or to take parental leave to care for a newborn child. Support for a national paid family and medical leave program has been steadily increasing in recent years. In 2017, a Small Business Majority poll found 70% of small business owners supported such a paid leave program. At that time, just three states had fully implemented paid family and medical leave programs; today, 10 states (including the District of Columbia) have programs fully in effect, with four more in the process of implementation.

Small business owners believe that offering paid family and medical leave is the right thing to do, and 80% would like to offer more paid leave than they can currently afford. This is an issue that is already familiar to small business owners, with nearly half (45%) reporting that they’ve had at least one employee take extended leave of more than one week in the past year. Furthermore, 43% of small business owners have taken extended leave themselves to care for immediate family.

Yet only about half of small businesses are able to offer any paid family or medical leave to their employees, with 56% offering medical leave for serious health needs and 51% offering parental leave for a newborn child. And even among small businesses that offer some leave, most can’t match the three months that a national paid leave program would provide. Of those who offer some medical leave or short-term disability leave for employees' own serious health needs, roughly two-thirds (67%) offer one month or less, and of those who offer some parental leave, more than half (53%) offer one month or less.

The survey also found that a national paid family and medical leave program is more popular than alternative policies. Small business owners prefer a universal paid family leave program for small businesses over a voluntary insurance program that businesses could choose to buy into by a two-to-one margin (a respective 61% and 31%). Forty percent would also prefer to replace the federal Employer Credit for Paid Family and Medical Leave (established in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act) with a guaranteed family and medical leave insurance program, versus just 16% who support extending the current tax credit.It’s important to note that the sample is politically diverse and that small business owners' support for paid leave transcends party lines: 93% of Democrats, 74% of independents and 72% of Republicans support a national paid family and medical leave program.*

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*Of the 500 business owners polled by Lake Research Partners, 45% respondents self-identified as Republicans, 36% as Democrats and 14% as Independents. Five percent responded either Other, Unsure, or Prefer not to answer.


 

 

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