The Berkeley City Council will discuss an ordinance that will add job protection language to Berkeley’s supplemental leave laws, as well as extend benefits to employees of the City of Berkeley if passed at their meeting on March 13. The Berkeley Commission on Labor and the Berkeley Commission on the Status of Women proposed the changes.
The proposal would prevent businesses with 25 or more employees from legally firing workers who take advantage of paid leave time. Additionally, the City of Berkeley would count as a “covered employer” for paid leave time benefits, meaning that employees of the City of Berkeley would be eligible for paid leave time and enjoy the same protections as other covered employees in Berkeley. The City of Berkeley would not cover the cost to the employer for allowing employees to take their paid leave.
The commissions’ proposal allocates funds to providing outreach, education, and enforcement regarding employees’ new job protection. In the supplemental materials provided by the commissions to Council, the commissions claimed that many people would not know about the change immediately, and that technical language might hinder some people, especially people without a college education and people who do not speak English as their first language, from fully understanding what rights they have under the proposal.
The council intended to vote on the proposal at their meeting on February 26, but the item was pushed to the next Council meeting because the meeting adjourned before Council could address it.
The director of the California Work and Family Coalition, Jenya Cassidy, supported the commissions as they developed the proposal. Cassidy said the coalition’s goal is oriented around their belief that, “Everyone should have the time and means to care for their family.” She said that so far, the proposal “seems like it has a lot of support.”
Emmaline Campbell, the chair of the Commission on the Status of Women, speaking only for herself and not on behalf of the commission, said that if people fear they will be fired for taking family leave it is as if they do not have the choice to take family leave even though they technically can take the leave. Cassidy hopes that the proposed benefits and protections will be enshrined into federal as well as local law.
Cassidy and Campbell both said that Berkeley felt inspired by San Francisco’s decision to require employers to provide one hundred percent of an employee’s pay during their six week parental leave instead of just 55 percent pay. They feel the legislation has positively impacted San Francisco. Campbell said she hopes that if the law is passed in Berkeley, it will show other governing bodies that such laws can be enacted without severely negatively impacting the business community.
According to the study “San Francisco’s Paid Parental Leave: The First Six Months,” “paid parental leave policies have been associated with increased breastfeeding, decreased infant mortality, decreased postpartum depression, increased immunizations, etc.”
Roland Peterson, head of Telegraph Property & Business Management Corp., said that he does not foresee the legislation having a significant impact on the businesses in his district because almost all of them have less than 25 employees. All other business associations in Berkeley did not respond for requests to comment or were not able to be reached.
Campbell and Cassidy feel optimistic about the fate of the proposal. The council can decide to pass or fail the proposal. It can also decide to send the proposal back to the commissions requesting changes.