Delaware and Maryland just enacted paid family and medical leave programs, picking up where Democrats in Congress left off in last year’s failed attempt at creating a nationwide version.
With their newly enacted laws, the neighboring states became the 10th and 11th—plus the District of Columbia—to guarantee paid family and medical leave to private-sector workers.
But differing political climates in Maryland and Delaware could mean big variations in how much of their workforces can access the paid time off, the impact on employers, and how effectively the programs get rolled out.
Access to paid time off from work in the US remains mostly dependent on the benefits that employers provide voluntarily. Just under a quarter of private-sector workers have paid family leave benefits at work, according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics estimate, and low-income workers are the least likely to have those benefits.
“Each state is passing kind of the best they can do in their particular context, given their state politics and the various lobbying groups,” said Vicki Shabo, senior fellow on paid leave policy at the New America think tank.
In Maryland, the Democratic-majority legislature is partially reliant on the state Department of Labor to help implement the program, under the oversight of Republican Gov. Larry Hogan whose veto of the paid leave measure Democrats...
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