Local lawmakers in Washington, D.C. are considering a proposal to provide up to sixteen weeks of paid leave a year for significant family or medical issues. As reported by CNNMoney, any District of Columbia resident, or any employee of a D.C.-based private company would be eligible. The proposed policy would be the nation’s most generous mandated paid leave policy by some distance.
In fact, only three states – California, New Jersey and Rhode Island – have mandated policies and they offer fewer paid weeks. Employees covered by the District’s so-called Universal Paid Leave Act of twenty fifteen could take paid time off for family bonding with a new child or a major personal or family medical issue. During their leave, employees would be paid one hundred percent of the first one thousand dollars of their weekly wages plus fifty percent of their weekly wages above that amount.
A person’s weekly benefit couldn’t exceed three thousand dollars, but that still translates into forty-eight thousand dollars over a sixteen week period. Benefits would be paid out of a fund managed by the city. To finance the fund, private employers in the District would be taxed between zero point five and one percent of every employee’s gross salary.
