Clinton Signs Family Leave Bill Into Law : Legislation: President marks first victory, promises mayors funds for Head Start, transportation projects.

Marking his first legislative victory, President Clinton on Friday signed into law a family leave bill that he said guarantees U.S. workers “will no longer need to choose between the job they need and the family they love.”

And hoping to demonstrate his efforts to expand the nation’s job base, Clinton met with 35 urban mayors and promised full funding of a major transportation bill, complete funding for the Head Start program, enterprise zones to stimulate inner-city growth and increased block grants for major community projects.

Clinton also announced that he had directed Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry G. Cisneros to free up about $11.6 billion in housing funds that had been authorized by the previous Administration but not spent, largely because of regulatory delays. Cisnersos was at the meeting.

The family leave legislation, twice vetoed by President George Bush as an undue burden on business, allowed Clinton to chalk up a legislative victory after only 16 days in office, and to make the claim--quickly disputed by Republicans--that his Administration had brought Washington’s years of legislative gridlock to an end.

In his first Rose Garden ceremonial signing, Clinton said he hoped that the law would become the first in a long line of social welfare statutes enacted in his term. He said he hoped eventually to sign legislation on welfare reform, childhood immunization, child-support enforcement and tax law changes to help the working poor.

“Family and medical leave is a matter of pure common sense and a matter of common decency,” Clinton said. “It will provide Americans what they need most--peace of mind.”

The law, passed by both houses of Congress Thursday night, gives workers up to 12 weeks of unpaid family leave each year for family illness, childbirth or adoption. It requires companies to continue their workers’ insurance benefits in their absence and to give them their jobs back when their leave is over.

The law goes into effect in six months. It applies to companies with 50 or more workers, meaning its provisions will cover about half the American work force.

Joining Clinton for the signing were a Marietta, Ga., couple, Vicki and George Yandle, both of whom lost jobs when they needed time off to care for a daughter who had been diagnosed with cancer.

Citing the efforts of advocates for the measure, Clinton declared, “It was America’s families who have beaten the gridlock in Washington to pass this family leave bill.”

Clinton has been eager to score early on Capitol Hill to build his Administration’s momentum, and to raise public support before the tougher fights ahead. Clinton is due to outline his economic plan in his State of the Union address on Feb. 17; by the end of April, the Health Care Task Force headed by his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, is scheduled to produce details of an even more complex task, reforming the nation’s health care system.

Practicing the consensus politics he employed with the nation’s governors at the start of the week, Clinton promised the mayors that he would loosen government regulations around federal programs, including the Community Development Block Grant program that pays for streets, drainage and other capital projects in economically depressed areas.

But in return, he urged the mayors to prepare lists of projects that can be implemented within 120 days and show results by the end of the year. Visible successes can help persuade Congress to renew funding next year, he said.

The block grant program, which experienced funding cuts during the recent Republican administrations, will receive a major boost in the economic stimulus package he will announce, Clinton said.

Construction money for other programs--such as the six-year, $151-billion transportation bill--will be accelerated, Clinton told the mayors. Congress appropriated about $4 billion less than what had been authorized for fiscal year 1993 and Transportation Secretary Federico Pena has been advocating full funding for the program.

The $11.6 billion in housing money already authorized but not spent is made up of $2.5 billion from the HOME Program, a low-income home ownership project; $3.1 billion in public housing modernization funds; and another $6 billion in public housing funds that were never spent.

“It will be modest,” Clinton said of his short-term economic stimulus package, “but it will be substantial in several areas.”

He warned that mayors would be wishing for more money but he was convinced of the “critical” need to begin cutting the federal budget deficit.

The President also spoke in broad terms of a five-year investment plan that the Administration hopes to create. It would increase funding for local improvement projects, outline a strategy to convert workers away from the defense industry and deal with containing health care costs.

San Diego Mayor Susan Golding said afterward that she reminded Clinton of the economic distress his proposed defense cuts are likely to create in areas such as Southern California that rely on defense-related jobs.

“Whatever job stimulus package is produced, it’s going to have minor effect (in Southern California) because of all of the defense cutbacks,” Golding said. “If you take with one hand, you have to come back with an economic conversion package and train these workers.”

But Golding, a Republican, joined the chorus of mayors from both sides of the political aisle who applauded Clinton’s attempts to fund urban programs.

For the mayors--who as a group had never been able to directly lobby Presidents Reagan and Bush for funding--just being in the White House seemed to please them. And many had come prepared with “ready-to-go” projects.

“If they are willing to put up the money, we can put 1.5 million people (nationwide) back to work right away,” said Boston Mayor Raymond L. Flynn, past president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. He said that he had a proposal, costing $104 million, that could employ 4,000 people in Boston.

Given that Clinton is a former governor and Cisneros a former mayor, both were credited with understanding the bureaucratic entanglements that delay the cities’ requests for funding, said Mayor Jerry Abramson of Louisville, Ky.

“This was the most energizing, refreshing, hopeful meeting I have ever had in Washington, D.C.,” Abramson said.

As the Administration decides how to fund enterprise zones--whether to fund many cities’ small dollar amounts or focus on a few larger projects--the mayors promised to give Clinton suggestions.

“It was not over promising, it was just staying with the promises he made in the campaign,” Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke said.

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Requirements of Law

Highlights of the family leave legislation signed Friday:

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

Family Leave--How Europe Does It

European countries were ahead of the United States in enacting national legislation on family leave. Some programs in brief:

FRANCE

French women were granted eight weeks paid maternity leave in 1909.

Women now get six weeks paid leave before the birth of a first or second child, and 10 weeks following the birth. For the third and succeeding children, eight weeks before birth and 18 afterward.

French workers get four paid days off when they marry. The father of a newborn gets three days off, and two paid days off are given for the death of a spouse or child.

GERMANY

Women receive six weeks leave before giving birth and eight weeks afterward. When they return to work, they are guaranteed time off for breast-feeding.

Mother or father can take up to a three-year leave of absence after the birth of a child, with a guarantee that a job will be waiting. Social insurance system pays up to $365 per month for up to two years to the parent on leave.

SWITZERLAND

A law enacted in 1984 provides for paid leave of three weeks for maternity in the first year. Subsequent leave is subject to negotiations with employer.

GREECE

Women are provided 52 days paid leave before childbirth and 53 afterward.

For illness, if the employee has worked between four months and five years, he or she receives six months paid leave, and two years paid leave for those who have worked five years or more.

RUSSIA

Legislation provides 56 days of paid leave for a woman before childbirth and 56 days after delivery, 70 days in the case of birth complications. Women are entitled to three days paid leave in case of abortion.

Either the mother or the father can claim 10 days leave if a child is ill. Similarly, either mother or father can take extended leave and stay at home for three years after the birth of a child.

BRITAIN

Maternity leave is 11 weeks before birth and 29 weeks afterward. Six weeks is at 90% full pay, 12 weeks at a flat rate, the rest unpaid.

There is no legal provision for paternity leave or caring for sick children.

Source: Times wire reports