Unfinished Business: Paid Family Leave in California and the Future of U.S. Work-Family Policy

by Eileen Appelbaum (Author), Ruth Milkman (Author)

New
Illustrated
2013
$44.29

Unfinished Business documents the history and impact of California's paid family leave program, the first of its kind in the United States, which began in 2004. Drawing on original data from fieldwork and surveys of employers, workers, and the larger California adult population, Ruth Milkman and Eileen Appelbaum analyze in detail the effect of the state's landmark paid family leave on employers and workers. They also explore the implications of California's decade-long experience with paid family leave for the nation, which is engaged in ongoing debate about work-family policies.

Milkman and Appelbaum recount the process by which California workers and their allies built a coalition to win passage of paid family leave in the state legislature, and lay out the lessons for advocates in other states and localities, as well as the nation. Because paid leave enjoys extensive popular support across the political spectrum, campaigns for such laws have an excellent chance of success if some basic preconditions are met. Do paid family leave and similar programs impose significant costs and burdens on employers? Business interests argue that they do and routinely oppose any and all legislative initiatives in this area. Once the program took effect in California, this book shows, large majorities of employers themselves reported that its impact on productivity, profitability, and performance was negligible or positive.

Unfinished Business demonstrates that the California program is well managed and easy to access, but that awareness of its existence remains limited. Moreover, those who need the program's benefits most urgently-low-wage workers, young workers, immigrants, and disadvantaged minorities-are least likely to know about it. As a result, the long-standing pattern of inequality in access to paid leave has remained largely intact.

Synopsis

Unfinished Business documents the history and impact of California's paid family leave program, the first of its kind in the United States, which began in 2004. Drawing on original data from fieldwork and surveys of employers, workers, and the larger California adult population, Ruth Milkman and Eileen Appelbaum analyze in detail the effect of the state's landmark paid family leave on employers and workers. They also explore the implications of California's decade-long experience with paid family leave for the nation, which is engaged in ongoing debate about work-family policies.

Milkman and Appelbaum recount the process by which California workers and their allies built a coalition to win passage of paid family leave in the state legislature, and lay out the lessons for advocates in other states and localities, as well as the nation. Because paid leave enjoys extensive popular support across the political spectrum, campaigns for such laws have an excellent chance of success if some basic preconditions are met. Do paid family leave and similar programs impose significant costs and burdens on employers? Business interests argue that they do and routinely oppose any and all legislative initiatives in this area. Once the program took effect in California, this book shows, large majorities of employers themselves reported that its impact on productivity, profitability, and performance was negligible or positive.

Unfinished Business demonstrates that the California program is well managed and easy to access, but that awareness of its existence remains limited. Moreover, those who need the program's benefits most urgently-low-wage workers, young workers, immigrants, and disadvantaged minorities-are least likely to know about it. As a result, the long-standing pattern of inequality in access to paid leave has remained largely intact.

$44.29

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More Information

Format: Illustrated
Pages: 168
Edition: Illustrated
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 05 Nov 2013
ISBN 10: 0801478952
ISBN 13: 9780801478956

Media Reviews

I believe the book is required reading for anyone who wants to understand and overcome the challenges to implementing successful work-family policies in the United States. As the authors suggest in their title, considerable unfinished business remains both in California and in the nation as a whole. -Candace Howes, ILRReview (May 2014)

In Unfinished Business, Ruth Milkman and Eileen Appelbaum tell the story of the political struggle that led to the advent of [Paid Family Leave] and explore the effects and limitations of the program in the first several years following its implementation. The modest length of this book is deceptive, as the authors manage to convey the past, present, and future of this policy with great depth and the support of several fascinating data sources... Since state-level policies are often used as testing ground for changes to federal policy, this book is necessary reading for advocates of national paid family leave in the United States. -Amy Armenia, American Journal of Sociology (September 2014)

These books can be recommended to academics, students and policy makers. Milkman and Appelbaum's examination of one policy development in one place is necessarily narrower in focus but offers more depth than Kroeger and Yeandle's cross-national analysis. -Narjes Mehdizadeh, Work, employment and security (May 2016)

Unfinished Business adds depth to our knowledge about how to craft and implement a new social insurance program that addresses the needs of today's families. Ruth Milkman and Eileen Appelbaum have conducted extensive quantitative and qualitative research that illuminates the effects of California's Paid Family Leave program on families, workers and employers. This is an important book and a must read for anyone who cares about making sure that everyone has time to care for themselves and their loved ones. -Heather Boushey, Chief Economist, Center for American Progress, coeditor of The Shriver Report: A Woman's Nation Changes Everything

Unfinished Business is a deeply informative exploration of the strengths and weaknesses of the most effective state-sponsored paid family leave program in the United States. Lucidly written in nontechnical language, this book provides realistic plans for moving forward. It should be required reading for everyone concerned with work-family issues. -Alice Kessler-Harris, R. Gordon Hoxie Professor of History, Columbia University

Ruth Milkman and Eileen Appelbaum provide a perceptive and lively account of the passage, implementation, and impact of the United States' first paid family leave law, passed in California in 2002. Unfinished Business assesses the initial decade of this landmark law, revealing a complex mix of success and disappointment: employers have reacted more positively than expected but the equalization of access to paid leave has not come to pass. The authors' keen observations about the economics and politics of the policy process will compel a diverse audience of academics and advocates, as well as policy practitioners working at both the state and national level. -Janet Gornick, coauthor of Families That Work: Policies for Reconciling Parenthood and Employment

Unfinished Business is an important and timely book: important, since the United States is the only advanced economy that does not guarantee workers access to any form of paid leave. And timely, with the December 12, 2013 introduction of The Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act, or FAMILY Act of 2013 by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) to establish a national paid family and medical leave program. This book will surely be a valuable contribution to the ongoing and upcoming debates. -Gail Pesyna, Vice President, Program Management, The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

Author Bio

Ruth Milkman is Professor of Sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center and Academic Director of CUNY's Murphy Labor Institute. She is the author of several books, including the prizewinning Gender at Work and L.A. Story: Immigrant Workers and the Future of the U.S. Labor Movement. She also is coauthor of Unfinished Business: Paid Family Leave in California and the Future of U.S. Work-Family Policy, editor of Organizing Immigrants, and coeditor of Rebuilding Labor and Working for Justice, all from Cornell. Eileen Appelbaum is Professor in the School of Management and Labor Relations and Director of the Center for Women and Work at Rutgers University. She is author or coauthor of several books including The New American Workplace: Transforming Work Systems in the United States, also from Cornell, and the coeditor of Low Wage America.