Family Leave Measure Wins House Approval

The House approved legislation Wednesday giving most workers the right to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid family or medical leave per year, but the measure failed to pass by enough votes to overturn a veto threatened by President Bush.

The family leave bill, a bipartisan compromise worked out by lawmakers last month, was approved by a vote of 253 to 177, falling 35 votes short of the two-thirds majority that would be needed for a veto override.

Proponents claimed partial victory, however, because the legislation was approved by a substantially larger margin than a similar bill vetoed by Bush last year. “It’s not veto proof, but the trend is clear,” said Rep. Marge Roukema of New Jersey, a Republican supporter of the measure. “The vote shows that the House does not want to be on record as voting against family leave.”

Roukema and other Republican supporters of the legislation said that they hope to meet with Bush to craft a compromise that could avert a veto.

They said that they are particularly worried that a veto would give Democrats another opportunity on the eve of an election year to criticize Bush for his handling of domestic matters. Polls indicate that the President’s popularity is declining because of the recession and the growing perception that he is not attending to the needs of the middle class.

“The political risks are very apparent,” Roukema said, adding that it would be “very unwise” for Bush to veto the legislation.

The bill, nearly identical to compromise legislation crafted and passed, 65 to 32, by the Senate last month, would require private-sector employers and state and local governments to grant both male and female workers as much as 12 weeks of unpaid leave each year because of personal illness, to care for a newborn or newly adopted child or to tend to seriously ill family members.

Small businesses with fewer than 50 employees would be exempt, while federal employees would get more generous provisions--up to 18 weeks of unpaid family leave over a two-year period and 26 weeks of medical leave each year for serious illness.

In each case, however, employers would be obligated to pay health benefits throughout the leave and to restore an employee to his or her previous job or an equivalent position.

The bill was scaled back from last year’s version to satisfy some concerns raised by business groups. Most part-time employees would not be covered, for example. Eligibility would be restricted to employees who have worked for an employer for an average of at least 25 hours a week over a one-year period.

Noting that two-thirds of all American mothers now work outside the home, supporters said that the legislation would bring outdated laws into line with the realities of a labor force in which both parents must have jobs to make ends meet. The United States, they added, is the only major industrial country that fails to give its workers such family leave guarantees.

But opponents like Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Long Beach) argued that the bill would put new “burdens on American business in the middle of a recession.” And the White House, renewing its veto threat hours before the vote, said that President Bush remains opposed to any legislation that interferes with the “normal collective bargaining process between management and labor” by federally “mandating employee benefits.”

That position gave Democrats seeking to put Bush on the defensive over his domestic policies an opening. “What’s the Administration’s family leave policy? ‘Home Alone!’ ” said Rep. Patricia Schroeder (D-Colo.), who came to the floor with a poster for the movie of the same name--a comedy-suspense film about a child accidentally left behind to fend for himself.

Even some lawmakers who sided with the Administration in the final vote appeared uneasy about doing so and sought to go on the record both ways by voting for the legislation in a key preliminary vote.

That vote came shortly before final passage, when lawmakers voted 287 to 143 to substitute the compromise bill sponsored by Reps. Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.) and Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.) for the original House bill that would have imposed costlier obligations on businesses.

“Some members were trying to have it both ways . . ,” Roukema said. “But the White House can still read trends and this one is clearly moving the nation in favor of family leave legislation.”