By: Kathleen Wilson
Fifty-nine percent of U.S. citizens believe the “American Dream” is unachievable. The American Dream, the “notion that the American social, economic, and political system makes success possible for everyone,” has transformed into the American Nightmare. More and more people are working low-wage jobs in a desperate effort to support their families and meet basic needs.
Women are frequent victims of this unending economic struggle. Approximately four million women head a low-income household in America, and households headed by women comprise 56 percent of all low-income working families. The American Nightmare, that is, current societal standards and a lack of substantive legislation that supports low-income workers, often forces these predominantly women workers to make impossible decisions.
A single mother who works a full-time minimum wage job to support her two children will be stuck more than $4,000 below the poverty line. Working round-the-clock to try to provide for her family, if one of her children gets a serious illness such as cancer, the woman has two options: she can either take off work to care for the child, sacrificing her extremely valuable pay, or she can go to work and, if even possible, leave her child in someone else’s care. As doctor’s appointments and medical bills begin to pile up, the mother is faced with the ever-growing dilemma. Either she chooses to work in order to continue to pay the bills or she chooses to take off work to take her sick kid to doctor’s appointments and treatments and thus falls further in debt.
Granted, not every working mother will have a child diagnosed with cancer; however, what if her spouse is terminally ill or seriously injured? What if she gives birth and needs time to recover? What if her ailing mother breaks her hip and needs round-the-clock care that is too expensive to afford? Again and again, the dilemma will remain: is it better to go to work and earn wages or take off work in order to care for someone? Having no recourse but to choose between providing for one’s family’s economic wellbeing or its physical wellbeing is truly a nightmare.
The Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act (FAMILY Act) is a piece of legislation that many claim would help alleviate these difficult decisions. In the instance of serious health conditions, either personal or of a child, spouse, or immediate relative and in the instances of pregnancy, adoption, or childbirth recovery, the FAMILY Act would provide workers with up to 12 weeks of partial income that can amount up to 66 percent of their wages. Funded by a two-tenths of one percent payroll tax, the FAMILY Act would cost employers and employees typically less than $2 per week. The program, administered by the Office of Paid Family and Medical Leave within the Social Security Administration, would be open to all workers, regardless of age, location, or employment status.
Introduced by Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and Senator Kristen Gillibrand (D-NY) in December 2013, the bill currently has 89 co-sponsors but lacks enough support to be approved by the House. Advocates of the FAMILY Act have used state family and medical leave insurance programs as examples of the success a national program could see. Policy analyses on California’s family leave insurance program that has existed since 2004 have found that employers and employees alike have benefitted from the program. Furthermore, in New Jersey, which has had a family leave insurance program since 2009, costs of program maintenance have actually been lower than expected.
Some have criticized the FAMILY Act because of the requirement that employers also contribute to the fund. Others have drawn into question the need for the act and the already overburdened Social Security Administration’s ability to oversee the program. In addition, some simply believe workplace reform should not be a current political priority.
Despite these criticisms and supposed flaws in the legislation, the idea behind the FAMILY Act is simple: our nation, as it is currently structured, forces American workers to make impossible decisions between their work and their family. As the only industrialized nation that does not offer paid maternity leave, passing the act would finally put the United States on more equal footing with other countries. In essence, the FAMILY Act is a practical legislative solution that can support low-wage workers through difficult circumstances and ensure that the American Dream does not become the American Nightmare.
