paid parental leave – Dispatches From The Front

On Tuesday, lawmakers in Washington, D.C. passed one of the most generous paid parental leave laws in the U.S.

The new legislation will grant all full- and part-time workers in the city eight weeks of leave at up to 90% of their full weekly wages for birth, adoption or fostering. The bill also provides for six weeks of family leave to look after a sick relative and two weeks for a personal medical emergency.

The law will only cover private-sector workers, excluding those on city or federal payroll. To qualify, a worker need only be employed in D.C.; residents of other cities and states with jobs in the capital are eligible. Non-profit workers and the self-employed are also covered.

Laughing Planet Café has 14 restaurants spread across Oregon and Nevada. Its 280 employees spend their workdays making burritos named after Che Guevara and mixing up salads called Highway to Kale. And now, in a move nearly unheard of in the restaurant world, they will all have three months of fully paid parental leave after they have a new baby.

Laughing Planet’s owner and chief executive Franz Speilvogel made the decision last week, after a pregnant store manager expressed concerns that she wouldn’t be able to take any maternity leave. “She’s entering her final trimester, and she talked about the circumstances of being an employee in my company and what she’s faced with,” said Speilvogel, whose Portland (Ore.) company didn’t previously have any parental leave policy in place. “I told her, let me think about it and get back to you.” He was still thinking about it a few days later when President Obama announced that federal workers would now get six weeks of paid sick leave and that he planned to push Congress to extend those rights to everyone else.

Tag: paid parental leave

Washington, D.C. Passes 8 Week Paid Parental Leave Bill | Forbes

The Laughing Planet Café Paid Maternity Leave | Bloomberg Business