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NOW and Senator Webb(VA) pushing for more Bennies for Federal Workers
http://lists.now.org ^ | 3/5/2009 | www.now.org

Posted on 03/07/2009 11:08:15 AM PST by Maelstorm

Paid Parental Leave
Urge Senators to Support This First Step

Ask your senators to support upcoming legislation to guarantee federal workers four weeks of paid parental leave for a new child, as a first step toward universal paid leave.

Action Needed:

Providing paid leave to parents is only fair to working families who need to both care for a new family member as well as maintain an income. Most industrialized nations have provided paid parental leave for decades.

Paid parental leave for 2.7 million federal workers can be the model that we can work to achieve for the rest of the country. This important "balancing work and family" legislation would help ensure that federal workplace benefits are competitive with the private sector and it also sets an important precedent demonstrating that our country values the "work" that parents and caregivers provide.

Send an email message to your senators using our website. We need your help to increase the number of co-sponsors in the Senate so that this legislation has a better chance of passage.

Take Action NOW

Background:

This January, a paid leave bill was introduced in both the Senate and the House. Sen. James Webb (D-Va.) introduced S. 354, the Federal Employees Paid Parental Leave Act, which will guarantee four weeks of paid leave for federal workers for the birth or adoption of a child. Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) is the chief sponsor of the House counterpart, H.R.626.

Under the current Family and Medical Leave Act, federal employees are allowed twelve weeks of unpaid leave. For many workers who are either at the lower pay grades or haven't built up their vacation time, having a child means that they will either lose several weeks of pay that is crucial to their family's survival or be forced to return to work after only a week or two.

The Paid Parental Leave Act addresses this important issue by ensuring that parents can spend at least four weeks at home with a new child without suffering devastating financial consequences. As more working families struggle to make ends meet during this devastating economic downturn, it is especially important to ensure that workers are not forced to choose between their mortgage and their new child.

To read more about the background to this important legislation, visit our website.

Take Action NOW!


TOPICS: Extended News; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; US: Virginia
KEYWORDS: 111th; federal; jimwebb; nags; now; unions; workers
What do these people not understand about sacrifice and economic slowdown. The one thing that hasn't slowed down spending is the obvious place for cuts, the federal government. We need to send a message that there is NO MORE SLOPPING AT THE PUBLIC TROUGH! Aren't any of you tried of this coming from those who are always calling for sacrifice?
1 posted on 03/07/2009 11:08:15 AM PST by Maelstorm
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To: Maelstorm

This is the first story in which I’ve seen NOW in forever. I thought NOW had all but folded up. Surely there aren’t enough bra burning 1960’s radicals left to actually fund the organization?


2 posted on 03/07/2009 11:15:07 AM PST by Melas
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To: Melas
I explain it in simple terms when I talk to people what is going on

You have a factory and you are looking for a place to move it to. Would you move it to a place with low taxes, low capital gains and corporate taxes, little to no union pressure, few regulations, or would you move it to a place with all the opposite of the former?

99% of people say the former. This is the argument that has got to be presented to people and how soak the rich policies affect them

3 posted on 03/07/2009 11:19:51 AM PST by lakertaker (Libertarian Party since 1998)
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To: Melas

It is now populated by their angry granddaughters


4 posted on 03/07/2009 11:20:19 AM PST by txnativegop (God Bless America! (NRA-Endowment))
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To: Maelstorm
Well,

I'm a federal employee so I should drink from the cup, right? WRONG! Social engineering. Real costs, that like all other social programs get ‘hidden somewhere,’ but that's not corruption you see?

Social Security = good and we need more / a Ponzi scheme on the other hand is corruption and illegal.

Obama buying billions worth of new helicopters for him is OK / executive flying to Washington to testify at a dog and pony show they are by law fiorced to go to are attacked with class warfare mantras because they flew there on jets- which their corporation paid for BTW, not the “tax payer.”

Sure, why not give every La Bomba working for the gummbermint in DC as a security guard, parking aid, or secretary four more weeks of paid leave when she squeezes out her fifth illegitimate Obama voter? “Think of the children!”

5 posted on 03/07/2009 11:20:53 AM PST by Red6
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To: Melas

They are still out there. They do have a good resource for contacting the media. NOW has long ago become irrelevant but with the ascendancy of Obama they now are becoming more vocal.


6 posted on 03/07/2009 11:23:00 AM PST by Maelstorm (This country was not founded with the battle cry "Give me liberty or give me a government check!")
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To: txnativegop

I have to ask, and bear in mind that I agree with feminism as it was originally couched in equality: What do their granddaughters have to be angry about? This isn’t 1965 and women aren’t held back. There are more women in college than men, the wage gap has closed, opportunity abounds women in every sector. So, what are they angry about?


7 posted on 03/07/2009 11:24:39 AM PST by Melas
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To: Maelstorm
And here we have Webb, the one who got lofted by the Washington Post into his cushy senatorial environment coming through with such worthy benefits for his paper's most ardent loyalists.
What comes around goes around.
8 posted on 03/07/2009 11:30:13 AM PST by hermgem (Will Olmr)
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To: txnativegop

Rush warned that once they got ‘unpaid leave’ they would come back and demand “PAID” leave.

Having a baby is elective. Want to have a kid? Why should my company pay you when you are not there?
Either I have to also pay for a temp worker, or I was over-staffed in the first place and you are not needed at my company.

Choose.


9 posted on 03/07/2009 11:31:40 AM PST by ridesthemiles
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To: Maelstorm

Federal workers currently can take leave, but they must use their own accrued leave. If you plan on having kids save up your leave and use it then. It’s part of family planning.


10 posted on 03/07/2009 11:34:27 AM PST by yazoo
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To: ridesthemiles

Rock and a hard place


11 posted on 03/07/2009 11:36:07 AM PST by txnativegop (God Bless America! (NRA-Endowment))
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To: Maelstorm

“Under the current Family and Medical Leave Act, federal employees are allowed twelve weeks of unpaid leave.”

Or they can use sick leave for almost 3 weeks of leave whether they are the mother or the father. They can also use one week of annual leave on top of the 3 weeks of sick leave, meaning they get a total of four weeks paid. I’m not sure how this good benefit needs to be improved at the cost to the taxpayer.


12 posted on 03/07/2009 11:41:12 AM PST by yazoo
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To: Melas
There was a study out recently about workplace bullying -- 70 or 80% was perpetrated by women.

I won't lump all members of a gender into one group, like the Leftists do, and I've had great female bosses, but, if I had a $1 for every "angry" woman I've had to work with....

13 posted on 03/07/2009 12:24:43 PM PST by elk ((A Member of the Silent 58)TM)
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