Campopiano / 1 Senator Kaneria

S.R._____

A BILL
To mandate that all corporations with over 30 employees provide six months of paid maternity leave for new parents.
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Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress
assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE
This act may be cited as the Maternity Leave Act of 2015.

SECTION 2. FINDINGS

Congress hereby finds and declares that,

1) The United States is the only country in the Organisation for Economic Development and Co-operation (OECD, a
group of countries with highly developed economies) that does not make paid maternity leave mandatory.
2) The Family and Medical Leave Act provides employees with up to twelve weeks of leave, but this is unpaid.
3)The United States has similar maternity leave policies to those of developing countries that struggle with literacy
and controlling aids.
4) In the European Union, women are entitled to have fourteen weeks of paid maternity leave, and this is only the
minimum, as each of the countries in Europe can make it higher.
5) A pregnancy often disrupts a womans employment.
6)
A period of leave after a mother has given birth has been shown to improve mother-child relationships and can

improve the mothers mental health.

8)
Women who used their paid maternity leave have reported an increase in pay after giving birth.

9)
Longer maternity leaves are often associated with lower perinatal, neonatal, and post-neonatal mortality rates as

well as better mental health for the mother.

10) By 2011, the median length of paid maternity leave in OECD countries increased to 42 weeks.
11) Only twelve percent of workers in the American private sector have access to paid family leave.
12) Many high income countries like Finland offer paid maternity leave without compromising their economy or health
care.
13) It has been shown that women who use their paid leave are far more likely to continue working nine to twelve
months after their childs birth than women who did not.
14) Only three states and the District of Columbia explicitly provide women with paid maternity leave.
15) Although paid maternity leave decreases maternal employment and wages in the short-term, it increases both in
the long run.
SECTION 3. STATUTORY LANGUAGE
A) The Maternity Leave Act of 2015 shall mandate that all corporations with over 30 employees are henceforth
required to provide six months of paid maternity leave to parents expecting or adopting a child.
The parents have to

have worked for the company for two and a half years. No pregnant woman that is currently employed at this sort of
corporation shall be denied this paid leave, nor should it be compromised in any way. This leave shall only be effective
for the first three children that are adopted/born. After this, the paid leave is no longer required to be given. After the
birth of the first child, the percentage of normal wage that is given decreases by at most 30 percent. After the birth of
the second child, the wage decreases by an additional ten percent at maximum. The wage continues decreasing by a
maximum of ten percent of the normal wage for each consecutive birth until the paid leave is no longer effective
(after the third child). This paid leave will also include fathers, as well as parents who have just adopted a child.
B) The Maternity Leave Act of 2015 shall be enforced by the United States Department of Labor. The amount it
will cost to carry out this law will be sixteen billion dollars per year. Twenty percent of the funding (3.2 billion dollars)
for this paid leave will come from deductions in the payrolls of employees, thirty percent (4.8 billion dollars) from the
corporation itself, and fifty percent of the funding (eight billion dollars) will come from the Total Outlays of 2015,
which contains a total of 3.8 trillion dollars.
C) Any corporation or employer with over 30 employees found breaking this law will be prosecuted in accordance
with the U.S. Code Title 29 Chapter 2. This law shall go into effect January 1, 2016.