Washington’s Paid Family & Medical Leave program officially launched January 1, 2020. By close of business January 5, nearly 6,400 Washingtonians had already submitted applications.
They included parents who’ve recently welcomed a new child into their family, people about to undergo surgery, and others supporting family members through cancer treatments. This program will ultimately impact every person in our state, improving the health and well-being of millions.
Washington’s program offers up to 12 weeks of medical leave for a worker’s own serious health condition and 12 weeks of family leave to care for a new child or a seriously ill family member, or to deal with a family member’s military deployment. Workers can take a combined total of up to 16 weeks in a year – to recover from childbirth and bond with their baby, for example, or up to 18 weeks if there is a serious pregnancy-related complication.
Benefits are progressive. Lower wage workers will receive benefits of 90 percent of their gross weekly wages, and people who made $50,000 last year will receive about 76 percent, with benefits topping out at $1,000 per week. Anyone who worked 820 hours in Washington last year is eligible to take the leave in 2020 if a qualifying event occurs.
Washington’s Work & Family Coalition campaigned for a comprehensive paid family & medical leave program for many years, with leadership from the Economic Opportunity Institute and support from unions, community-based organizations, small business owners, thousands of impacted workers, and a core of committed legislators. The success of paid sick days and minimum wage campaigns in Seattle, Tacoma, and Spokane beginning in 2010, and voter approval of an initiative to raise the minimum wage and require sick leave statewide in 2016, paved the way for negotiations between coalition representatives and business lobbyists and passage of PFML with strong bipartisan majorities through a divided legislature in 2017.
Over the past two years, dedicated staff at the Employment Security Department have been hard at work building the new systems to make the program a reality. It was down to the wire, but in the end they delivered a little early, opening the application system on December 30.
Washington is the fifth state to have a comprehensive PFML program, but the first to build it from the ground up. In designing our system, we learned from and built on experiences in California, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and New York, which were able to add paid family leave to decades-old temporary disability insurance systems. Steady funding to EOI and peer support through Family Values @ Work and the larger national movement all contributed to Washington’s success.
Learn more about Washington’s program and view the application portal here.
