Family Leave Bill Near House OK, Snags in Senate

Determined to end years of gridlock on social policy, the House was poised Wednesday to approve a family and medical leave bill endorsed by President Clinton, though its future was clouded in the Senate by Republican efforts to attach an amendment reinstating the outright ban on homosexuals in the armed services.

The House, responding to Clinton’s request for fast action, placed the family leave bill at the top of its 1993 agenda after former President George Bush twice vetoed similar legislation and it became a major campaign issue. Democratic leaders predicted that it would be passed by a healthy majority.

The measure would require the nation’s largest employers to grant workers up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave in case of childbirth, adoption or serious family illness and guarantee that they would get their jobs back.

In the Senate, however, GOP lawmakers threatened a filibuster to back up their demand for a vote on their proposal to roll back the President’s order last Friday that partially relaxed the military’s policy of ousting known homosexuals.

Before the Senate quit for the night Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.), rejecting the Republicans’ request, filed a petition to limit debate on the family leave measure.

But Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) said he did not believe that the Democrats can muster the 60 votes needed to limit the debate.

Mitchell summoned Senate Democrats to a caucus today to report on his daylong negotiations with Dole and test the sentiments of his party colleagues on a series of options for dealing with the standoff.

“I sense some disarray on the Democratic side because some of them don’t want to have to vote on this issue,” Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.) said with a smile. “But we want a vote and we’re going to get it if we have to hold up this bill or any other bill.”

Although Republicans apparently were trying to put Democrats on a political spot by forcing them to cast a vote on the proposed gay ban, Mitchell said it was possible that a compromise could be achieved to pass the bill.

But it was far from clear Wednesday night that either side would yield, indicating that the Senate would become snarled in an emotional dispute rather than speeding passage of the family leave bill as Democratic leaders had hoped.

If the measure does stall, the first legislation of the 103rd Congress will not show that the election of a Democratic President to work with a Democratic Congress could end legislative gridlock. It will instead demonstrate that the Republican minority, operating under the Senate’s rules, which allow filibusters, has the power to block a bill backed by a strong Democratic majority in each House.

But some Democrats said Republican senators would suffer politically if the public believed that they were blocking the popular family leave legislation to make a political point on the gays-in-the-military controversy.

In the House, familiar arguments were made on both sides during a nine-hour debate on the family leave legislation. Supporters argued that it was essential so that working parents did not have to choose between their families and their jobs. Opponents contended that it would unduly burden business with additional costs and government regulation in an area that should be left for private decision-making.

The House and Senate bills would apply to employers with more than 50 people on the payroll, accounting for only 5% of companies but 44% of the nation’s work force. Employees would have to work 25 hours or more a week for a year to qualify for the leave.

Key employees--the highest-paid 10% in a firm--could be exempted from coverage by businesses. Although employers would be required to continue paying health insurance premiums during a worker’s absence, they could recapture this amount of money if employees do not return to their jobs.

Workers who can foresee their absences would have to provide 30 days’ notice of intention to take leaves of absence for births, adoption or planned medical treatment.

The provisions would take effect six months after the bill is signed into law.

“This issue is a motherhood and apple-pie issue but it’s not necessary to have another federal mandate to business,” Rep. Dan Miller (R-Fla.) argued.

“This legislation is eight years overdue and the family leave bill responds to the changing needs of the work force,” Rep. Barbara-Rose Collins (D-Mich.) countered.

Speaking for the Democratic leadership, Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) told the House: “We are rushing to put this bill on the President’s desk for American families.”

Family Leave Legislation

Highlights of the family leave legislation. The House and Senate versions are nearly identical:

BASIC PROVISIONS

Workers could take up to a total of 12 weeks of unpaid leave during any 12-month period for:

1. Birth of a child or an adoption;

2. To care for a child, spouse or parent with a serious health condition;

3. Their own serious health condition that makes them unable to perform their job.

Employees must be returned to their old job or an equivalent position when they come back.

Employers do not have to keep paying their workers but do have to keep providing health benefits, just as though the workers were still employed.

No cost to taxpayers; workers are not eligible for unemployment or other government compensation when they take the leave.

Only workers who have been employed for at least one year and for at least 1,250 hours (25 hours a week) would be covered.

*

BUSINESS PROVISIONS

Exempts companies with fewer than 50 workers.

Lets companies deny the benefit to salaried employees within the highest-paid 10% of their work force, if letting the workers take the leave would create “substantial and grievous injury” to the business operations.

Permits employers to obtain up to three medical opinions and certifications on the need for the leave.

If workers do not come back, employers can recapture the health care premiums they paid during the leave.

Source: Times wire reports