Editor’s note: This commentary is by Rep. Lucy Rogers, D-Waterville, a member of the House Health Care Committee.
[O]n Friday, the Vermont House voted 92-52 to create a Family and Medical Leave Insurance (FaMLI) program. If it passes into law, this program will enable employees to take up to 12 weeks of bonding leave after adoption, the birth of a child, or foster child placement, and up to 8 weeks of medical leave during the illness of themselves or a close family member.
In the House, we talked about the influence of this program on individuals, businesses, and our government. What has been missing all along from the conversation on FaMLI is a discussion of gender parity, which is ultimately a discussion of why our employment structure needs to change in the first place.
In my grandparents’ time, FaMLI would have been unnecessary. Women raised children, cared for sick family members, and otherwise enabled their husbands to work full-time. Careers were originally designed to fit into a system in which one member of each family was home all the time to care for non-work needs.
I am living proof that the times have changed, at least in some ways. I have held a lifelong interest in science and math. I hold an elected political position, and I will eventually continue my studies with graduate work in quantitative genetics. Throughout my life, I have been encouraged to invest in academia and to seek a prominent place in the workforce, as have many women of my generation.
However, this change in our societal aspirations for women has not yet been accompanied by a complimentary change in the structure of our occupations. Even though I grew up at the turn of the 21st century, I still ask myself every day whether entering into a research career in the natural sciences means that I could never dedicate adequate time to my family. If we want to change the way our society is structured around gender, we must also change the structure of our careers.
The FaMLI bill is about work-life balance. As we strive for equality, we must allow for each participant of the workforce, regardless of gender, to participate in family and work roles simultaneously. I hope that by the height of my career, I will no longer have to weigh whether to continue working or invest in my family.
Our Legislature too frequently pits social issues against financial considerations, so I want to briefly address the fiscal side of this bill. For me, social and fiscal issues can never be considered separately. In this case, the fiscal concern is that we are taking money from Vermonters to put into the FaMLI program. However, the money collected for FaMLI goes directly back to the people who pay into it. Taxes typically have the ultimate effect of taking wealth from one sector of the population and redistributing it to another sector of the population, which raises moral questions surrounding the appropriate scope of government. The money raised by this bill is different, as it does not ultimately shift wealth from one sector of the population to another. Unless the employer chooses to pay the premium, employees will contribute to the insurance program at a rate of 0.55% of covered wages ($2.37 per week for a full-time minimum wage worker). Over the course of a lifetime, each participating employee is likely to benefit at least once from this program, and thus the money collected will be distributed back to the people from whom it was taken.
In addition, many small businesses would like to provide the benefits offered through FaMLI but lack the scale necessary to do so. FaMLI will give them an affordable way to match the benefits provided by larger companies, therefore becoming more competitive in the labor market.
The dynamics of our workforce exist in a state of constant motion, whether due to the growing mechanization of labor, the effects of in- and out-migration, the shortages and surpluses in the labor market, or the ever-shifting demands for goods and services. The restructuring that will result from FaMLI is simply another example of changing our workplace dynamics in response to external needs.
I voted in favor of the FaMLI bill, and I am proud that we are working to create an employment structure that can function in modern-day society. I have many female role models who are loving, supportive family members and powerful, driven leaders in the workplace. I aspire to become part of the first generation of women for whom this balanced investment in family and work can be achieved with support from the social structures created by our government, rather than despite them.
