New York Assembly OKs Paid Family Leave Insurance Bill

By Josefa Velasquez | March 7, 2014

New York’s Assembly passed a series of bills Wednesday intended to provide affordable child care, increase funding for child care subsidies and establish paid leave for medical emergencies, the birth or adoption of a child or to take care of a sick relative.

One of the bills requires employers to have paid family leave insurance for their employees. The cost of the insurance would be offset by weekly employee contribution of up to 45 cents from their paychecks.

The Family Leave Insurance bill also proposes to raise the Temporary Disability Insurance premium but split the cost between employer and employee.

Currently, the state provides $170 a week in TDI for workers caring for close relatives who are sick. It is unclear how much that figure would rise under the new legislation.

The bill passed on an 84 to 40 vote and was delivered to the Senate.

Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan’s bill expands the definition of a family member to include a child — biological, adoptive, or foster — a domestic partner, parent, grandchild, grandparent and sibling or parent of a spouse or domestic partner. What she called the “modern family.”

The Assembly also passed a bill that would limit the co-pay for child care subsidies to 20 percent of the household income above federal poverty level as well as a bill that would revise the formula for determining household income to exclude money made by individuals under the age of 18.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver says the cost of the measures will be released in next week’s Assembly budget proposal.

Related Articles:

Topics New York

Was this article valuable?

Here are more articles you may enjoy.