Sen. Gillibrand: National paid parental leave would boost small businesses

Axios
·2 min read

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) said that federally funded paid parental leave could boost small businesses who would otherwise be unable to offer the benefit to employees, while speaking at an Axios virtual event on Wednesday.

Why it matters: Nearly a million American mothers have left the workforce during the pandemic and women's labor force participation is at a 33-year low. Some of the decline has been attributed to more women quitting their jobs, at least temporarily, to take care of their children.

Stay on top of the latest market trends and economic insights with Axios Markets. Subscribe for free

The big picture: President Trump was the first Republican president to call for paid family leave, signaling bipartisan interest in creating legislation, per the New York Times. The bill he supported while in office was more limited than Democrats' proposals.

What she's saying: "I think companies that want to retain their workforce and keep a positive, healthy work environment are offering paid leave, but the real challenge is it's hard for a small business to offer paid leave on its own," she said.

  • "It's hard to compete with the super successful large businesses that can offer it. And so the reason why national paid leave is such an elegant solution is that it's very inexpensive."

  • "If it's a national program, it only costs two dollars a week for each employee with within a year. That's one hundred and four dollars a year per employee to set aside so they can have paid leave when they need it. And for that employee to match it, it's affordable."

  • "And it's this levels the playing field and allow small businesses to compete with the big businesses who can already afford it. But the biggest businesses that want to retain women, want to retain diversity, want to retain a complex workforce."

Watch the full event here.

More from Axios: Sign up to get the latest market trends with Axios Markets. Subscribe for free

Recommended Stories

  • Think twice before reaching out to the people of color in your life after a traumatic event. Here's how to know when it's OK, and things you should never say.

    Before calling, assess whether it's your place to do so, therapist Reshawna Chapple told Insider. If you do, avoid comparisons and long conversations.

  • For DACA recipients, a Senate vote and a Texas judge stand between citizenship and deportation

    Many Dreamers said they fear deportation as lawmakers in Congress once again debates whether to give them a path to U.S. citizenship.

  • 'Who Would Buy This?' Jimmy Kimmel Shows Off MyPillow Guy's Weird New Merch

    Mike Lindell's latest business venture takes an unexpected turn.

  • China tops list of US's biggest threats for first time

    The US has for the first time designated China as its number one threat, with the intelligence community revealing on Wednesday that it is opening investigations into Beijing “every 10 hours”. Spy agency leaders told a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing that China is an "unparalleled priority”, citing the country’s regional aggression and cyber capabilities. “I don't think there is any country that presents a more severe threat to our innovation, our economic security and our democratic ideas,” Christopher Wray, FBI director, said in his testimony. “And the tools in their toolbox to influence our businesses, our academic institutions, our governments at all levels are deep and wide and persistent. “We have now over 2,000 investigations that tie back to the Chinese government,” he added. “I can assure the committee that's not because our folks don't have anything to do with their time."

  • Kim Potter: Former police officer who shot and killed Daunte Wright arrested on manslaughter charges

    Killing of 20-year-old Black man has sparked protests and unrest in Minnesota city

  • NC ROTC student, who is Black, practiced drills with fake gun. A neighbor called police.

    A family struggles with what might have happened — and how anyone could see a teen in an ROTC T-shirt carrying a wooden gun that resembles a musket as a threat.

  • Royal family release unseen pictures of Duke of Edinburgh surrounded by great-grandchildren

    The Royal family have released unseen pictures of the Duke of Edinburgh surrounded by his great-grandchildren ahead of his funeral on Saturday. The pictures of Prince Philip include a photograph taken by the Duchess of Cambridge of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh surrounded by seven of their great-grandchildren at Balmoral Castle in 2018. In another, posted on the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's Twitter account, William and Kate are seen along with Prince George and Princess Charlotte in a photo with Philip and the Queen at Balmoral in 2015.

  • Billionaire Jack Ma was one of China's biggest success stories. The government turning on him speaks to an animosity against billionaires in the Communist country.

    China isn't just cracking down on Jack Ma - the Communist Party is reining in billionaires as the wealth gap grows even wider.

  • Coinbase says the entire crypto market could be destabilized if Bitcoin's anonymous creator is ever revealed or sells their $30 billion stake

    Satoshi Nakamoto owns about 5% of all bitcoin. If their 1.1 million cache was transferred, it could compromise bitcoin's over $1 trillion market.

  • The picture Khloe Kardashian didn't want you to see and the pressure to look perfect

    Khloe Kardashian didn't want anyone to see this photo. What this says about today's unattainable beauty standards and the pressure to look flawless.

  • A woman who traveled to the Bahamas with Rep. Matt Gaetz in 2018 says no one was underage on the trip, according to Politico

    The woman told Politico that everyone on the trip was over 18 years old and that no one on the trip engaged in prostitution.

  • Chinese man with Down's syndrome kidnapped and killed to provide substitute body

    A Chinese man with Down's syndrome was murdered in an attempt to circumvent a ban on traditional burials. Cremation is enforced in some densely populated areas of China, but to get around the regulations one family paid a man to provide them with a body to swap with that of their deceased relative. It later emerged that the body was that of a murder victim killed by the man they hired - an event the family insist they were unaware of. The family, from Shanwei in Guangdong province, spent nearly £12,000 in 2017 to get a substitute for cremation. The man they hired was identified only by his surname Huang. According to court documents, Huang spotted Lin Shaoren, 36, picking litter from the street and asked him into a car before giving him alcohol until he fell unconscious. Huang put the man’s body into a coffin, nailed it shut and passed it onto the family a few days later. The family then had the coffin cremated, pretending it was their own deceased relative. This left them free to secretly hold a traditional burial.

  • India Covid-19 migrants: 'Lockdown will make us beg for food again'

    Workers are again facing loss of wages and migration as local lockdowns loom amid a surge in Covid-19.

  • When Your Wife Dimes You Out to the FBI as a Capitol Rioter

    Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/GettyImagine the FBI knocking on your door to question you about your participation in the deadly pro-Trump riot at the U.S. Capitol. You’re foolish enough to invite them, without your legal counsel present, into your home, at which point the feds show you a photo—of you, rioting. You think you can wiggle your way out of this. You lie, and tell them that it’s not you in the photo.Now, imagine your wife or girlfriend then stepping into the room and, unprompted, identifying you as the man in the photo, unintentionally snitching you out to the feds in your own house.As more and more MAGA rioters have gotten caught or charged in the months-long fallout from the Jan. 6 mob violence, that is the kind of story that has followed so many of the indictments and federal investigation—suspects have been identified or busted in so many of the dumbest possible ways that you’d expect the whole saga to be a scene out of Step Brothers.On this week’s episode of The Daily Beast’s Fever Dreams podcast, hosts Will Sommer and Asawin Suebsaeng sit down with Ryan J. Reilly, a senior reporter at HuffPost covering U.S. law enforcement and its hunt for Trumpist rioters. Reilly has spent the past three months meticulously cataloguing the dark, perversely humorous ways in which many of these far-right extremists have found their way into FBI custody. They gratuitously incriminate themselves. They pretend to be tough guys, and then are revealed to be impersonating a trooper or a federal agent. The feds keep making fun of the defendants in affidavits and in court documents. Often, they get ratted out by old high-school chums and rivals, loved ones, or even a random “Facebook stalker” from their home town.Reilly discusses cases such as that of Brent Bozell IV—son of famous conservative activist Brent Bozell—in which the right-wing scion and alleged Capitol rioter was busted not because of FBI in-house sleuthing but because of an amateur online sleuth in Hershey, Pennsylvania, who “described herself to me as the person that everyone [in town] goes to when they need to look into what their new man is up to… So, when any of her girlfriends get a new man, they come to her and she does all the online sleuthing.”Along the way, Suebsaeng also takes listeners inside the Trump 2020 campaign’s “voter fraud” hotline room, which was created by the campaign shortly following former President Donald Trump’s clear loss to Democrat Joe Biden. The hotline and email tipline, in its brief and painful existence, also became a magnet for trolls and pranksters who wanted to inundate Trump staffers with as many grotesque or ludicrously pornographic images as possible.He Was Partners With ‘QAnon.’ Now He Wants Them Arrested.Suebsaeng was recently sent a trove of images, and offered graphic descriptions of others, that had flooded the Trump team in the days following Election Day 2020. He reviewed them—much to his palpable disgust—for Fever Dreams fans’ listening pleasure.“There were deep fakes of then-President Trump in his underpants, or if not in his underwear… just a completely nude Donald Trump with no genitalia. One person who was subjected to rifling through these images described how there was a point where they had to zoom in on the fake photo to confirm that the Donald Trump in that image indeed had no dick, and wasn’t just a nude Donald Trump,” Suebsaeng said.This is one way in which the Trump re-election campaign met its undignified end. And there was a lot more... so if you want a deeper glimpse into what Trump forced his staffers to be subjected to in November, check out the whole episode.Listen to Fever Dreams on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

  • A grieving daughter dropped her toy. A president gave it back.

    United States Capitol Police Officer William Evans, who died in the line of duty April 2, is lying in honor in the Capitol Rotunda.

  • Walmart, Delta, and Coca-Cola refused to join hundreds of other companies in opposing restrictive voting laws - here's why

    JPMorgan Chase, led by Jamie Dimon, and Home Depot also didn't sign the full-page ad that ran in the New York Times and Washington Post.

  • Former classmate arrested in 1996 disappearance of college student Kristin Smart

    Nearly 25 years after 19-year-old college student Kristin Smart vanished while walking back to her dorm, a former classmate, Paul Flores, 44, has been charged with one count of murder in connection with her disappearance. Flores' father, Ruben Ricardo Flores, 80, was also arrested on Tuesday and accused of helping his son dispose of Smart's remains. Smart, a freshman at California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo, disappeared in May 1996 after attending a party. Witnesses said Paul Flores said he would make sure she made it safely back to her dorm, but Smart was never seen again. Classmates described Flores as awkward and unpopular, the Los Angeles Times reports, and during questioning from authorities, he admitted to lying about how he got a black eye. Investigators used search dogs and radar equipment to try to find Smart's body, but her remains have never been discovered. She was declared dead in 2002. San Luis Obispo County Sheriff Ian Parkinson told reporters on Tuesday that new evidence in the case was secured in 2016, and in 2019, after hearing a podcast about the Smart case, witnesses came forward and were interviewed for the first time by authorities. Search warrants were issued for the home of Flores, his father, his mother, and his sister, and during a second search of Flores' home, physical evidence "related to the murder of Kristin Smart" was found, Parkinson said. An attorney for Paul Flores declined to comment, while an attorney for Ruben Flores told the Times his client is "absolutely innocent." Parkinson said police will continue to look for Smart's remains, and in a statement, her family said they hope the arrests of Paul and Ruben Flores will be "the first step to bringing our daughter home." More stories from theweek.comThe girl at the center of the Matt Gaetz investigation also reportedly went on his scrutinized Bahamas tripTrump finally jumps the sharkWhy Trump's insistent dominance of the Republican Party could be a real 'gift' to Biden

  • Man who shot elephant seal in head as it rested on beach sentenced to prison

    Jordan Gerbich killed marine mammal ‘as a kind of grotesque test’ after friend told him to

  • Man fleeing police crashes, wedges Maserati under freeway

    A man fleeing the California Highway Patrol totaled his girlfriend's Maserati SUV after he careened up an embankment and slammed into the underside of an overpass, wedging the vehicle under a freeway in Oakland, authorities said Tuesday. Police say the 32-year-old man was speeding on a highway Monday when a CHP officer tried to stop him.

  • U.S. FDA to scrutinize vaccine design behind COVID-19 shots linked to blood clots

    With two COVID-19 vaccines now under scrutiny for possible links to very rare cases of blood clots in the brain, U.S. government scientists are focusing on whether the specific technology behind the shots may be contributing to the risk. In Europe, health regulators said last week there was a possible link between the AstraZeneca Plc vaccine and 169 cases of a rare brain blood clot known as cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST), accompanied by a low blood platelet count, out of 34 million shots administered in the European Economic Area. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday recommended temporarily halting use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine after reports of six cases of CVST in women under age 50 among some 7 million people who received the shot in the United States.