Care time: another face of discrimination in health care
I often check the New Old Age blog, because anecdotes suggest that unmarried people may be tapped (more than their married siblings or peers) to become caregivers for elderly parents. Today’s post caught my eye: families can write contracts to compensate the caretakers for lost income. That’s a good idea for people who leave their jobs entirely. But what about people who “just” take time off work to care for parents, siblings or anyone not their spouse?
I call “being able to take time off work to care for a family member without being fired” care time for short. Care time improves the health and economic well-being of workers and their families. Although unmarried people have real family care needs and responsibilities, they disproportionately lack care-time because
- their employers are allowed to penalize employees for taking care-time, or
- their employers are mandated to provide some kind of care-time, but are allowed to use marital status to determine which employees get care-time.
The Family and Medical Leave Inclusion Act would greatly improve people’s right to care for non-spouses. It would amend the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 to permit leave to care for a same-sex spouse, domestic partner, parent-in-law, adult child, sibling, or grandparent who has a serious health condition. Congress tried to pass it in 2007 but didn’t get anywhere. It was re-introduced on April 28th with more co-sponsors, and is now in committee.
A related proposal, the Family Leave Insurance Act would provide up to 12 weeks of paid leave benefits to workers who need to care for an ill family member (child, parent, spouse, domestic partner, grandchild, grandparent, or sibling) or new child, to treat their own illness, or to deal with an exigency caused by the deployment of a member of the military.
AtMP is seeking a volunteer to track the progess on these bills and help us further develop our care time strategy. Though I love to meet our volunteers, this work can be done anywhere via phone and email. If you’re interested, please post here or send me an email.
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health care, marriage promotion
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