Paid Family and Medical Leave and Universal Child Care Are Key Parts of the Infrastructure We Deserve

Congress spent a lot of time creating a plan to upgrade our roads, bridges, and other infrastructure. Now we need to pressure them to handle another infrastructure need: support for caregiving and those who do that work.

House leadership says they’ll hold the vote on the physical infrastructure plan until a much larger, $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill is voted on. The reconciliation bill will provide funds for care infrastructure, including money for childcare and paid family and medical leave. 

Now’s the time for us to make ourselves heard. Paid leave and universal childcare need adequate funding. Workers and their families can’t afford not to have this support — or to lose it to horse trading.

“We have been making impossible choices for decades when it comes to meeting our families’ caregiving needs and paying the bills,” said Ana Pardo, co-director of the Workers’ Rights Project at the North Carolina Justice Center. “A national paid leave program, and an aggressive approach to funding affordable child care, will enrich and stabilize the lives of millions of working people and our loved ones. It’s high time our country’s policies reflected the incredible value of caregiving.”

The proposed federal infrastructure budget is a chance to reimagine federal policy and create a new economy, one based on caring, equity, and respect — and paid family and medical leave and universal childcare should be at its core. But the details matter. An equitable policy would include:

• 12 weeks of comprehensive paid leave for all workers, giving them time to welcome or take care of a child/children, a family member, or themselves
• progressive wage replacement, meaning workers who earn the least can afford to take leave because they’d be eligible to receive the most money
• the right to return to work, giving employees the chance to go back to to the same or a similar job once their leave ends
• accessible paid leave for members of all kinds of families, including those led by same-gender couples, single-parent or -guardian families, and multigenerational or extended families.

The infrastructure bill should also prioritize a comprehensive childcare package centered on helping working families and workers in the childcare industry. Quality childcare is expensive. Yet childcare workers, who are mostly women, are severely underpaid. The COVID-19 pandemic made the nation’s childcare crisis worse, and it continues to affect parents, childcare providers, and their employees. The reconciliation bill should prioritize funding that makes high-quality childcare affordable and helps early education workers receive a better-than-living wage.

“We’re all in this together,” said Gladys Jones, founder and leader of the dynamic New York City provider-activist network ECE on the Move. “The caregiver has to be whole and must be well to take care of others. Early childhood educators and daycare operators need the ability to be able to say, ‘I have to close,’ without losing their business because they got sick or without their employees having to suffer.”

Universal childcare and paid family and medical leave can’t just be items on a wish list. Support adequate funding for both programs by contacting your elected officials.

The Build Back Better plan is the most expansive infrastructure legislation in nearly 100 years. It’s a chance to reimagine our economy and take care of those who keep it going: workers. By supporting paid family and medical leave and universal childcare, you can help ensure our most essential workers get what they need.