I would say that this is still bad legislation for business. It's the same legislative nightmare and the same issues that we argued at 12 weeks are there for six. It's still hard to get temporary workers part time, and it's still going to create a hardship for business.
[The business community will wage] all-out war [against paid family leave because] someone's got to pay for it [and] paid leave will give employees an incentive to use it.
By paying workers who take extended time off from the job for almost any sort of family concern, this mandate would impose significant costs in the form of payments for replacement workers, including overtime. It would disrupt work schedules and leave difficult gaps in staffing for small and large companies…It's already hard enough to do business and provide jobs in New York state. Our leaders in Albany should not make it still harder.
This socialist diktat takes feel-good politics to a new level….the basic argument for this socialist propaganda is the necessity for Big Brother to subsidize an army of breastfeeding single mothers….Ultimately, the inevitable impact of the cost of the paid family leave measure will fall on the shoulders of the ever-diminishing minority in this state: those who build businesses and create the real jobs that sustain our economy. You know, the ones moving to Florida and other states with no state income tax and few of the ridiculous government regulations that make New Jersey the worst state in the nation for small business.
Most businesses would tell you that they presently take care of their employees. They don't need government telling them how to do it.
Small businesses can and do fail because of this. There is a cost, both in dollars and in disruption. The cost in dollars is the cost of a temporary worker for which the company pays a premium, the training of a replacement worker and the overtime paid to remaining workers who help fill in for that absent employee.
Massachusetts cannot escape the new world order. As business across the nation resists being used as a government beast of burden, or run by its unions, it outsources jobs overseas to workers who are grateful to have them. Or hires illegal immigrants. Or begins to develop robots to take the place of entitled, demanding humans. Eventually, American ex-workers will have lots of free time to hang out with their families, though the money to feed, shelter and clothe them may be in short supply.
This is either a late April Fool's Day joke or Massachusetts should be on suicide watch….Here we are, one of only two states to lose population; sixth-highest tax burden; national reputation for high cost of doing business….Yes, along with our winter weather and everything else that discourages job creation here, we would have the 'most generous' mandatory paid leave in the country. Eventually, of course, the new employee tax would increase and be joined by a new tax on employers.
When the cost of employment goes up, you lose your job. If you don't have a job, family leave insurance doesn't help you.
We can follow the [social] programs of Germany and France and get unemployment way up into double digits. That's the result of bad legislation.
