As Americans head to the polls, affordability is top of mind for most U.S. voters: Ninety percent of them say the cost of living is a “very” or “extremely” important issue for candidates to discuss
But when it comes to the “affordability” conversation, one major financial burden often gets overlooked: the cost of caring for a child, an aging parent or yourself in a country without a national paid family and medical leave program.
Paid Leave for All—the national campaign of dozens of organizations fighting for federal paid family leave—has used the last few weeks before Nov. 3 to travel to battleground states and connect with local communities about the affordability crisis and the need for paid leave policies. Between Oct. 13 and 16, Paid Leave for All’s multi-state “Time and Money” bus tour made stops in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio, hosting press conferences and speaking with workers, families and caregivers.
None of the states on the Paid Leave for All bus tour have statewide paid leave policies. (Only 14 U.S. states and the District of Columbia have paid leave programs in place, leaving these policies up to individual employers in the other 36 states.)
However, all three (Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio) have bills that could improve state paid leave if they move through the legislature in the coming months—and this largely depends on which candidates people vote into office next week.
“However people vote or whatever you identify politically, what happens next week is going to determine what we’re able to do federally,” Dawn Huckelbridge, founding director of Paid Leave for All, told Ms.
A lack of paid leave only exacerbates the ongoing affordability issues many families are having—so the “Time and Money” bus tour also served as a mutual aid hub, bringing free diapers, school supplies and grocery and gas cards and distributing them at all three stops.
Two weeks before Election Day, with early voting ongoing already in most states, organizers at Paid Leave for All hoped to keep the affordability conversation front and center as voters got ready to fill out their ballots.
“We wanted to do our due diligence to make sure that paid leave stayed at the top of an economic agenda in a new Congress and beyond,” Huckelbridge says. “We wanted to get on the road and talk to communities directly, because we know that affordability is sort of this buzzword right now, and we wanted to talk to people and families of all kinds about how they’re experiencing that and how this caregiving crisis exists within that.”
Paid Leave for All regularly hears from families that some of the biggest sources of their financial stress revolve around caregiving—such as struggling to find affordable childcare, or take time off from work to care for a sick child or elderly parent.
We’re living in a time when voters across the country, from all demographics and political affiliations, are experiencing economic insecurity. However, the burden falls even heavier on some specific groups: women and women of color. Even with the progress women in the workforce have made in the past 100 years, and historic numbers of women candidates on the ballot this election cycle, women still do the majority of caregiving. All the while, this work is undervalued or unvalued entirely.
“The work of care is too often seen as a private issue; it’s too often invisible altogether,” Huckelbridge says. “Part of what we wanted this bus to do was to make visible those experiences and that work, and to tell those stories, and make sure that we’re lifting them up to power brokers … because it’s women who have held our society together without the policy support that most countries take for granted.”
The U.S. is currently one of only seven countries in the world with no national paid parental leave policy. Research has shown that this gap between what parents need and what is available hurts the economy; women have been dropping out of the workforce over the last several years as prices rise and everything, including childcare, become more and more expensive. As a result, women are losing the opportunities and financial security that comes with steady employment, putting strain on entire working families.
It’s women who have held our society together without the policy support that most countries take for granted.
Dawn Huckelbridge, Paid Leave for All
On the October bus tour, Paid Leave for All met with community members who shared stories about the effects paid leave—or lack thereof—has had on their family’s lives.
America’s lack of paid leave policies hurts everyone, including men. In Ohio, Huckelbridge says, she met a man who had been a firefighter in his community for 25 years and had a paid leave policy through his work for the city. When he was in his 60s, due to difficult family circumstances, he had to adopt his beloved grandson. With the paid leave he was able to take from work, he was able to take the time he needed for his family. Now, his grandson is thriving.
“We don’t always lift up as many of the stories of fathers and different kinds of caregivers like adoptive parents, so that was a special evening,” Huckelbridge says.
In Harrisburg, Penn., Paid Leave for All met Jasmine, a woman who used to own a soul food restaurant. After she broke her leg carrying heavy platters, it became too difficult to pay her bills while caring for herself, so she was forced to close down her restaurant. Through her resilience and resourcefulness, Jasmine was able to pivot, and now she runs a catering business. However, by losing her restaurant, she lost her financial security, her community and her ability to heal free of stress.
The cost of not having paid leave policies “is more than dollars,” Huckelbridge says. “It’s about having the ability to keep your doors open for a business that was thriving and employing other people and driving the economy. It’s also about losing friendships, relationships, marriages, retirement, security.”
The success of paid leave policies in hundreds of other countries worldwide shows that paid leave is practical, realistic to implement and beneficial for the economy.
According to Huckelbridge, “There’s not always an easy fix for a lot of these problems that people are facing, but paid leave is actually quite an elegant solution to the feeling of not having enough resources, not having enough time, not having enough money.”
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