Houston City Workers Win Paid Parental Leave

In a big win for city workers, on Wednesday Houston City Council passed a proposal to establish a new Paid Parental Leave policy for City employees.

The policy will give workers who have been with the city for six months up to 12 weeks of paid leave after welcoming the birth, adoption, or foster placement of a child.

The Houston Organization of Professional Employees (HOPE) AFSCME Local 123 worked closely with Councilmember Abbie Kamin to develop the policy, and member testified in support. Currently, city workers have to use vacation days to care for their newborns.

A historic number of women have left the workforce over the past year, often because they lack paid family leave at work. A report from the Center for Women and Work at Rutgers showed that a woman who takes paid leave to care for a child after birth is more likely to remain employed for nine to twelve months after birth than a woman who takes no leave.

This policy will also cover working fathers, an improvement over many similar municipal paid family leave policieis. A 2014 study of U.S. working fathers, 9/10 said it would be important for an employer to offer paid parental leave if they were looking for a new job, and 6/10 said it was “extremely important.”

The United States is the only wealthy nation that doesn’t guarantee paid leave. Besides the United States, the only other countries with no national paid maternity leave are the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea and Tonga.

We’re thankful to the Mayor Turner and Houston City Council for working with city workers to pass paid parental leave for Houston workers.