Thanks for reporting on this. I think that having the states tackle this issue is the right approach. I don’t think it is a shame that we don’t have a national requirement, I think it is better that we don’t have a nationwide cookie cutter family leave policy. If the states can be the incubator so we can see how different policy solutions develop we can have better outcomes. I think if we are going to move to single payer health care it should be handled the same way. Each state chart a path and look at other states to see how they are doing and then take the best ideas and refine their policies with an eye on what works best in their state.
The population of your state is comparable to that of many of the smaller European countries and the states in the U.S. are in many ways more different than each other than the countries in Europe.
Actually your state has two very different regions, does the law accommodate this diversity within your state? How does the Washington Family Leave law help the self-employed like farmers, family farmers? This is only a half serious question, if Washington does help them with family leave, I would be very interested in how, it would seem to be a very difficult problem. My experience has been the only people who can help a new Mother and Father farmer is other family, cash is only compensation the work still needs to get done and you can’t have the CFO and CEO not working at critical times. Some problems don’t have good solutions but that should not hold up fixing problems that have good solutions.
Thanks again.
TEK
