FV@W Celebrates PFML Win with Maine Coalition

Family Values @ Work congratulates our partners—Maine Women’s Lobby, Southern Maine Workers Center, and the Maine Paid Leave Coalition—on their hard work building sustained momentum to move their paid family and medical leave (PFML) bill forward. We celebrate with them today as Governor Mills officially signed paid family and medical leave into law.

“We are delighted to be among the growing number of states to pass paid leave!” said the leadership at Maine Women’s Lobby. “This is a historic win for Maine workers and their families. It comes from years of hard work and partnership, which highlights the power of collaboration, evidenced by the strength of the Maine Paid Leave Coalition and the support and assistance from Family Values @ Work. Together we can continue to support and strengthen policies for all of Maine”

FV@W applauds many components of the PFML bill: ensuring that lowest wage workers get 90% of their paycheck if their application for paid leave is approved; inclusive definition of family; use of paid leave for safe time purposes, to support the needs of survivors of domestic abuse or sexual assault and their families; and the use of paid leave to support military families. We are also happy to see that $25 million has been allocated in the state budget to start the program.

“We know that no bill is ever perfect and faces ongoing development during rules making and implementation. We have concerns about the option for the program to be administered by a for-profit company or other non-governmental entity but are confident in our partners’ ability to wage an implementation campaign that defeats this option,” said Josie Kalipeni, Executive Director of Family Values @ Work.

“We appreciate legislators’ and the coalition’s efforts to require strong accountability measures should a non-governmental entity be selected. We also know from our Network’s experience that having a non-governmental entity running the program is ultimately less transparent in oversight, costs more, and results in a higher rate of denials. These issues end up harming the workers and families who need paid leave the most. We urge the state to ensure that the paid family and medical leave program will be run by an accountable state government agency.”

Ronny Flannery, Organizing Co-Director with Southern Maine Workers Center remarked, “We should be using taxpayers’ money to invest in and rebuild our own State institutions, our own department of labor, and not to deepen the pockets of private insurance companies. A dozen of the thirteen states who have passed PFML have already modeled how to implement it without turning to privatization. Privatization will lead to cut corners, the loss of public control, of transparency and public input, erroneous denials, and will create unnecessary barriers that will land hardest on the poor and working class people with the greatest need to access it.”

Maine becomes the 14th state, including Washington, DC, to pass paid family and medical leave and the latest coalition to realize success after years leading the work on the state-level. This means that more workers and more working caregivers have access to take time off from work without it meaning losing their job or their income.

FV@W is the premiere national organization supporting state organizations in campaigns to win paid family and medical leave. We’ve been with the coalition of partners in Maine from the beginning of this work! As we celebrate our 20th anniversary in this work, every new PFML win adds further evidence to the Network’s power and credence to what we all know: this is doable on the federal level, too.