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Op-Ed: Paid family and medical leave is an investment in New Mexico’s future

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Tracy McDaniel
Southwest Women’s Law Center
Las Cruces Sun News

In the last few years, Southwest Women’s Law Center has led a coalition advocating for the passage of Paid Family and Medical Leave Act in the New Mexico state legislature. PFMLA would create a state-administered trust fund that ensures that no one has to choose between their job and caring for a new child, a family member with a serious health concern, or their own serious medical condition.

Last year, the Doña Ana County Early Childhood Education Coalition, a part of the prenatal to career education initiative called the SUCCESS Partnership, joined a growing number of organizations, individuals, and small business owners asking the state to make this critical investment in working families. Bringing Paid Family & Medical Leave to New Mexico is a goal of the Children Born into Healthy Homes Action Network, and the reasons are clear.

In states with PFML programs, families who take paid leave to welcome a new child have better outcomes. PFML programs have been found to decrease child abuse injuries and infant mortality, increase vaccination and breastfeeding rates, and improve the physical and mental health of parents during the first two years of life.

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Why the governor and legislature should support the Paid Family & Medical Leave Act

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To the editor:
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought into sharp focus the ways in which U.S. workers struggle to balance work, health, and family obligations. This is particularly true for women, especially women of color, who have left the workforce at shocking rates in the last year, including 275,000 American women in January 2021 alone. We can and must find ways to help New Mexicans create balance between work obligations and caring for their health and their family.


If passed and signed into law, the Paid Family & Medical Leave Act (HB38) would create a state-administered trust fund that ensures that no one has to choose between their job and caring for a new child, a family member with a serious health concern, or their own medical condition. After an initial investment of $30 million dollars for start-up costs, which will be repaid to the state within the first five years of the program, employee and employer contributions will fund compensation payments and administration of the fund.


How will this work? After contributing to the fund for at least six months and submitting an application to the Department of Workforce Solutions, workers will receive a percentage of their average weekly wages for up to 12 weeks of leave. Self-employed individuals can opt into the program. Employees and self-employed individuals will receive leave compensation payments directly from the Trust Fund. During an employee’s leave period, employers will benefit from wage savings, which may be used to pay overtime wages for current employees, hire a temporary replacement, or to invest in other ways.


The costs for each worker are modest with a full-time minimum wage worker ($21,840 annual salary) paying only $109.20 annually and their employer paying $87.36 annually. For the average wage in New Mexico ($47,040 annual salary), the worker will pay $235.20 annually and the employer will pay $188.16 annually.


Both employers and workers will benefit from PFML programs. Employers who offer PRML have a competitive advantage in hiring and retention. PFML programs are effective in improving workers performance and engagement. Workers who take paid leave are more likely to be employed by the same business two years later, less likely to take sick leave when they return to work, and more likely to report high morale and workplace satisfaction. Like the public sector in New Mexico, large corporations understand this competitive edge. These corporations are increasingly likely to offer private paid leave programs to attract and retain high-quality workers. However, few of our homegrown New Mexico businesses are large enough to easily absorb the costs of offering this benefit.


New Mexico is proud to offer entrepreneurs, start-ups, and small businesses an opportunity to innovate, experiment, and grow right here in the Land of Enchantment. Because of the economic downturn, HB38 proposes a delayed implementation timeline with more than two years to begin rolling out the program. The delayed implementation timeline recognizes both the economic realities facing New Mexico and the urgency of the moment.


Terrelene Massey, Executive Director
Southwest Women’s Law Center
Albuquerque

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My View Tracy McDaniel: Paid Family and Medical Leave Can’t Wait

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By Tracy McDaniel
Feb 28, 2021

COVID-19 made clear that U.S. workers struggle to balance work, health, and family obligations. This is particularly true for women, especially women of color, who have left the workforce at alarming rates in the last year, including 275,000 American women in January alone. This exodus of women from the workplace is due in large part to the conflict between work and caregiving. We can and must find ways to help New Mexicans balance work obligations and caring for their health and their families.

The U.S. has struggled to cope with the economic realities of the pandemic in ways that other countries have not. One significant reason for this difference is the lack of support for workers who are suddenly unable to participate in the workforce due to health-related or caregiving concerns.

Among wealthy nations, the U.S. stands alone in its failure to ensure paid sick leave and paid family leave to workers.

As one of their first acts in response to COVID-19 in March, members of the U.S. Congress enacted temporary paid sick and paid family leave. While leaders in other countries were working to address the myriad issues related to the economic and public health crises, Congress was caught debating paid leave measures that have been guaranteed to workers elsewhere around the world for years. The provisions they passed were temporary, limited and have since expired.

Guaranteed paid leave has been replaced with a temporary tax credit for employers who choose to provide leave. Because of the limited reach and voluntary nature of these provisions, many New Mexicans have been unable to access this support.

While limited in their reach among New Mexicans, this series of rushed temporary measures at the federal level have demonstrated that paid leave policies are necessary to an economy’s ability to respond, adapt and bounce back from major financial and public health disruption. Based on an Urban Institute analysis, states with existing paid family and medical leave programs were better able to respond to pandemic-related claims than those relying solely on unemployment insurance systems.

If New Mexico had a such a program in place before the pandemic, our economy and our communities would have suffered less from coronavirus-related hardships. We now have the opportunity to create systems that support future economic resilience for New Mexico.

The state Legislature currently is considering House Bill 38, which would create the Paid Family and Medical Leave Trust Fund administered through the Department of Workforce Solutions. After six months of contributions, individuals would be able to receive leave compensation from the trust fund to take up to 12 weeks away from work to welcome a new child, manage a serious health condition or care for a family member with a serious health condition.

Because of the economic downturn, HB 38 proposes a delayed implementation timeline with more than two years to begin rolling out the program. The delay recognizes both the economic realities facing New Mexico and the urgency of the moment.

In the face of an unprecedented crisis last spring, precious time was wasted at all levels of government, scrambling to deal with a problem that other countries have already solved. We must support workers and ensure economic stability. A paid family and medical leave policy is imperative to our economic security at the individual, community, state and national level. For New Mexico to be ready for the next emergency and to protect everyday workers experiencing caregiving needs and health conditions, we must act now to enact paid family and medical leave.

Tracy McDaniel is a policy advocate with Southwest Women’s Law Center. She has been working to improve
outcomes for young children and families in New Mexico since 2009.

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The Southwest Women’s Law Center’s Statement Regarding Acts of Oppression during the 2021 New Mexico Legislative Session

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This legislative session began with historic gains. We welcomed the most diverse legislature in the history of New Mexico, and for the first time, a majority of NM House members are women. We also welcomed our first African American Senator and a historic number of openly LGBTQ legislators. In addition, New Mexico’s delegation to Congress is now comprised of all women of color. Although there is still a long way to go before we have a truly representative legislature, we were thrilled to see progress toward that goal.

Unfortunately, the same forces that have long created barriers to proportional representation became apparent through acts of racism, anti-LGBTQ language, transphobia, misogyny, and white supremacy throughout the NM Legislative Session. These acts, both subtle and overt, have persisted and increased with frequency as we come into the frenzied last few days of the session. These acts of oppression have largely gone unchecked. Southwest Women’s Law Center stands in support of our queer-, woman-, and BIPOC-identifying legislators and ask that leadership acknowledge and address the acts that have been perpetrated against them.

Early on, one Senator questioned a Cabinet Secretary-designee’s ability to do her job because of her race. In another incident, a Representative called the police during a Committee hearing because she took offense to a comment made by an African American expert witness. More recently, another Republican Senator referred to some colleagues as “female dogs” after a lobbyist was caught on a hot mic using profanity to disparage Democratic Committee members.

More subtle instances have also been on display. Women, LGBTQ, and BIPOC legislators have been denied time to present their bills in certain influential committees. Those who have been allowed to present have been belittled, demeaned, and treated disrespectfully by the committees. We saw these behaviors spill over in a dramatic way onto the Senate floor during the debate of HB 20 on Thursday night, shining a more public light on what has been transpiring in committees throughout the session.

Though usually less obvious, the persistent bullying of some legislators by others demonstrates the ways in which the legislative process itself has been designed to reinforce power dynamics and allow a few members disproportionate control over what does and does not pass through the legislature. When a group of long-time legislators, mostly straight CIS men, utilize the structures of the legislature to berate and ignore legislators from diverse backgrounds, we see the system being used to silence certain voices. When diverse legislators are denied the opportunity to advance bills intended to promote equity, we see how those in power use these structures to maintain the status quo.

The people of New Mexico elected a historically diverse legislature, but legislative leaders have not done the work necessary to address the systems of oppression that have previously led to non-representative electoral bodies. As a result, a historically large number of marginalized people are facing oppression and violence embedded within the structures of those systems. It is beyond the time that we name these acts, address the structures that perpetuate them, and stand in solidarity with those who have been harmed, harassed, and mistreated while working without pay to serve and represent their communities.

 
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The Southwest Women’s Law Center Statement Regarding the Shooting in the Metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia Area on Tuesday, March 16th

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The Southwest Women’s Law Center (“SWLC”) denounces and decries in the strongest terms possible the shootings at Atlanta metro area massage/spa facilities on Tuesday, March 16th, whereas of this writing, eight individuals were killed. Six of the victims were Asian American/Pacific Islander (“AAPI”) women.
 
This is nothing new. The AAPI community has historically been the target of racism. Former President Trump and those in his administration engaged in a racist verbal assault against the AAPI community, which has inflamed a year-long eruption of racist attacks across the country. This ongoing violence, coupled with yesterday’s mass shooting event, has caused our AAPI friends, neighbors, and community in New Mexico to live in fear for their safety and for that of their families and loved ones.
 
It is being reported that Robert Aaron Long, a 21-year-old white man, has confessed to the murders, claiming that he has a “sexual addiction” and that the businesses where the shootings occurred were a “temptation” and needed to be “eliminated”. He was said to be on his way to Florida to continue his work when he was fortunately intercepted by police and arrested. It is reported that the gun used in the murders was purchased earlier in the same day.
 
Whatever the stated reason for the deadly attacks, the motivation for these murders cannot be separated from the meteoric rise in hate crimes nationally against the AAPI community, precipitated by the Trump administration over the last four years and continued by his supporters. In fact, Trump referred to Covid-19 as the “China virus” as recently as the evening of these murders. While the previous administration’s actions have much to do with the precipitous upswing in racially motivated attacks against the AAPI community, this cancer did not start with the Trump administration. The AAPI community has been the target of racial discrimination and violence for hundreds of years.
 
From the targeting of Chinese-run businesses in 1886 San Francisco, to the internment of Japanese American immigrants and citizens during World War II, discrimination and violence against the AAPI community is nothing new. And so, it continues today. Identifying the motive for these murders as perceived sexual deviancy or a “sex addiction” in an attempt to divert the conversation away from the racial violence being perpetrated against the AAPI community simply will not work. Not this time. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck.
 
This attack reflects the deadly intersections of racism, white supremacy, and misogyny, which harm women and people of color daily through systemic oppression. The violence perpetrated on Tuesday was not an anomaly, but rather a reflection of a society that has been structured to maintain white male privilege and excuse violence perpetrated by them against women and communities of color.  As we continue our work to fight systems of oppression and strive toward equity and justice, we at the SWLC ask that you hold your AAPI friends and neighbors close and that we wrap the community in love and healing.
 
 
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How Indigenous Women Repealed New Mexico’s Longstanding Abortion Ban

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Via Bustle, By Jennifer Gerson

When Terrelene Massey watched New Mexico’s bill to repeal the state’s abortion ban die in the state House in 2019, she was struck by what she calls a “convenient argument” made by some legislators: that they couldn’t vote in favor of the bill because their Native and Indigenous constituents were opposed to it. These legislators — by and large non-native — said their constituents’ cultural practices and spiritual beliefs were at odds with the pro-abortion measure.

Massey, the executive director of the Southwest Women’s Law Center, knew this couldn’t be true. From her own lived experience as a Navajo woman, and her professional experiences as an advocate for Indigenous women in the Southwest,she’d seen firsthand how her peers value body sovereignty as part of their spiritual traditions, and how Indigenous people throughout the region had longstanding, ancestral practices for delivering abortion care.

“Maybe it’s because I am Native American, I am more attuned to seeing what’s missing when we’re not at the table and people trying to fill in our voices for us — and filling that space with inaccuracies and myths,” Massey, who had advocated for the 2019 bill’s passage, tells Bustle.

Jennifer Gerson, Author, Bustle.com

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