Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are emphasizing the need for paid family leave in the U.S.—and by putting it on the agenda, they guarantee that voters will hear plenty of Republican fear-mongering about how terrible it would be if the U.S. followed almost every other country in requiring employers to let workers stay home with a new baby or sick family member. But we don't have to look to other countries to find out how it works. We can look at California, or Rhode Island, or New Jersey.
California's law:
... hasn’t been the death blow to businesses that opponents warned of, according to studies over the past decade. California’s employment growth outpaced the U.S. average by 2 percentage points during that time, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. [...]
Private-sector workers can collect 55 percent of their wages, capped at $1,104 per week. Payouts to 1.8 million people in the first decade totaled $4.6 billion, according to the state. Nine in 10 people claimed them to bond with a new child, and, while most recipients were women, claims by men have jumped 411 percent from the first year. New Jersey and Rhode Island have since enacted similar policies. A proposal in the California legislature aims at making the program more accessible to the poor by boosting the proportion of earnings that lower-income workers receive.
An analysis for the U.S. Labor Department led by Columbia Business School professor Ann Bartel last year examined dozens of studies on family leave. It concluded that while California’s policy prompted mothers and fathers to take more time, it didn’t harm workplace productivity, profitability, retention or morale.
The existing state laws could be stronger, but they give many workers at least the option of taking some leave without going too far into debt. Remember, too, that for all the complaining from business lobby groups like the Chamber of Commerce, laws like paid leave help out some employers—the ones already trying to do the right thing, who no longer have to worry so much about being undercut by low-road competitors.
As usual, this is a sensible, just policy for which we have dozens of models, including in our own states, and which Republicans will never let through Congress as long as they can stop it.