With strong leadership from the state AFL-CIO, New Jersey may soon guarantee workers paid time off to take care of an ill family member or newborn child.

Yesterday, the New Jersey State Senate passed legislation requiring employers to offer their workers up to six weeks of paid family leave at two-thirds salary. Maximum payout will be $524 a week.

“This legislation makes real the ideal of family values, which so many politicians claim they support,” AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney said.  “No mother or father should be forced into bankruptcy because their child got sick and needed them, and no son or daughter should have to choose between caring for an elderly parent and losing everything they have.”

The measure, now headed for the New Jersey General Assembly, will be financed by employee payroll deductions that will cost each worker in New Jersey a maximum of 64 cents a week, or $33 a year.

“I congratulate those Senators in New Jersey who bucked the corporate lobbyists and did the right thing – and AFL-CIO New Jersey State President Charlie Wowkanich as well as other coalition partners who made sure of it,” Sweeney said.

If enacted, New Jersey will be the third state after California and Washington to require paid family and medical leave.

Last year, a paid family leave bill (S. 1681) was introduced in the U.S. Senate and legislation, calling for paid sick days for workers, was introduced in both Houses of Congress.

“Slowly, state by state, we are inching toward a policy the rest of the industrialized world embraced long ago. Now it is time to pick up the pace and ensure everyone in America has the freedom to practice their own family values,” Sweeney said.

Contact:  Caren Benjamin 202-637-5018