Good afternoon and welcome to New America's virtual space, which we're so excited to share today with our organizational co-hosts for this event. The Bay Area Council, the California Working Family Coalition, the Child Care Law Center, the First Five California, Legal Aid at Work, Parent Voices, SEIU California, Small Business Majority, and UFCW Western States Council. My name is Vicky Shebo and I'm a senior fellow with the Better Life Lab at New America. The Better Life Lab works in solidarity with the Movement for Work Family Justice to transform policy and culture so that people across race, class, ethnicity, and gender can thrive. Much of my work here and for the last 12 years has focused on advancing paid family and medical leave policies nationally in states and within the private sector. Like so many people, I got interested in this issue because of my own personal experience, which highlighted vast inequalities and access to paid leave within workplaces. I'm also a native Californian and take a lot of pride in my Golden State heritage. All of this is why I'm thrilled today to celebrate a historic paid leave milestone. 20 years ago tomorrow, September 23rd, 2002, California became the first state in the country to enact a paid family leave program to ensure that parents caring for a newborn, a newly adopted child, a newly placed foster child, and family members needing to provide care to a loved one could do so without losing all of their wages. California's program was built on top of its long-standing personal medical leave program, state disability insurance, which has provided wage replacement to working people through their pregnancies and recovery from serious personal health issues since the 1940s. Together, SDI and paid family leave support working people and families across the state. They've also provided a roadmap that 10 other states in the District of Columbia have followed. In New Jersey, Rhode Island and New York, where there were similar programs to build on, and in Washington State, the District of Columbia, Massachusetts, Oregon, Colorado, Maryland, and Delaware, which have or are now building programs, they're doing that from scratch. And California's experience also substantially shaped the national paid family and medical leave program that Congress came closer than ever to adopting last year. You'll hear much more about California's program today, its history, its legacy, the people and businesses it's helped, the research it's generated, and the improvements it's made over the course of the next two hours. But I wanted to flag a couple of things that have stood out to me over the years. First of all, since its inception, paid family leave has provided leave to nearly 4 million people. Each of these represents a chance that someone had to hold a new baby's hand, comfort a loved one through a scary or serious personal health circumstance or other circumstances. And another 11.6 million people have taken leave for their own serious health issue. Cancer, heart attacks, strokes, broken bones, and pregnancies. California's program's been studied a lot. Research shows that people take paid leave and come back to work. This goes especially for new moms and women who are most often providing care to their loved ones. But it also tells an important lesson about men in care. Because of California's paid parental leave benefit, men are now significantly more likely to take leave. When California's program started, men were about 17% of all new parents taking leave. And now more than 40% of paid parental leaves are taken by men. That is a huge shift and it's made possible by the interaction of policy and culture. We know that California's program as first passed was imperfect and that the state's story is also one of progress and change. And this continues even now today as the governor has a bill on his desk for a signature that would expand paid leave in the state. Former president Bill Clinton said on the occasion of the FMLA, the federal unpaid leave laws 20th anniversary that laws are breathing living monuments that are meant to change with the times. And California advocates and lawmakers have ensured that that's true. We'll hear much more about this from our three panels. Lawmakers and staff who have crafted and improved the program, researchers who have studied it, businesses, workers and advocates who are among those that have directly benefited or served people who have benefited for the program. In a moment, I'm gonna turn the floor to my friend and colleague, Janya Cassidy, the incredible tireless executive director of the California Work and Family Coalition. But first just a little bit of housekeeping. We encourage you to post on social media using the hashtag CApaidLeave. We encourage you to answer questions that we'll have in the Slido poll and to comment there for questions and that's how you'll get questions to our panelists. We are recording the event so you can watch it again later or share it with colleagues. And thank you for being here. We wish we could be in person for this virtual celebration, but we're so excited to have people from across the country that wanna come together to celebrate and learn from California's experience. And now I'm pleased to turn it over to Janya Cassidy of the Work and Family Coalition for a brief overview of the PaveLeave program's history and our sincere appreciation for its champions. Janya? Thank you so much, Vicki. And thank you for your tireless work over the years. We've just all learned so much from you. And thank you to all of our state and national partners who helped put this event together and are working with us in California on equitable PaveLeave for all. So the first slide you see is us celebrating a victory a few years ago. My name is Janya Cassidy and I'm the director of the California Work and Family Coalition. And for those of you who don't know us, the Coalition is an alliance of organizations that led the campaign to win PaveLeave 20 years ago. Right now we still continue to work on PaveLeave, of course, in all the ways that people have time for themselves and their family. So before coming to work for the Coalition, I worked in a hospital as a union rep. And I got to help nurses and other hospital workers navigate the FMLA, the Unpaid PaveLeave. When they had a new child or they needed to care for a family member or take time for their own serious illness. But I especially remember one nurse who really needed a lot more time. We just didn't have as much time back then and she needed a lot more time after having twins due to complications and postpartum depression. In 2005, a year after Californians could access their PaveLeave benefits, I had twins myself and was thinking about how much easier it would have been for that nurse and so many other workers if we had paid family leave at that time. When we launched the campaign to pass PaveLeave, we won in the same year and we had a lot going for us actually. We had a really great grassroots campaign that was just starting a really strong lawmaker, then Senator Sheila Kuhl who was very passionate about the bill and also a very experienced lawmaker. We had the amazing leadership from the California Labor Federation and all the unions across the state and a governor then, Gray Davis who really wanted a historic bill to hang his hat on as he moved on. So it was a really great year. We had just so many incredible grassroots leaders who set us on our path. Joni Chang who was with Asian Law Caucus and passed away really tragically a few years ago at a pretty young age said during the campaign, it's not enough that what you wanna do is right and will help people, you have to involve them. And that's why organizing and coalition building is really at the heart of our work and at the heart of this movement today. So it's also part why we're part of, the coalition is part of the national family values at work network, which started really soon after PaveLeave passed in California because if it was possible in California, it could happen state by state and then really set a tipping point for the national, for national PaveLeave at some point. So family values at work supports grassroots efforts and I think being part of this network connected to other state coalitions has really enriched us and it's actually just made our forward progress in California over the years possible. So as you can see here, we learned really early on the passing PaveLeave was only going to be the first step. When we passed PaveLeave, of course there were some compromises in our law and we also learned a lot about what was and wasn't working about the law. So we worked to improve our law every year and we stayed together and worked to make it more equitable, expanding the definition of family, winning job protection and this year really fighting to make a very, very impactful change in wage replacement, which is something that you'll hear mentioned today. So this is just a picture of coalition members having a regional meeting, probably a pre-pandemic. And I just wanna say I'm really incredibly proud of the work we've done collectively, not just the coalition, and partners across the state, and really national partners all over the country to make PaveLeave a reality in people's lives. It's something that I found in all these years of working that not one person doesn't care about time to care for themselves and their family. So I'm really, really proud of the work we've done this year with a lot of new partners. Over 400 organizations across the state have stood up to fight for a higher wage replacement rates for family PaveLeave and SDI. The bill that Vicky mentioned that's on the governor's desk right now. It definitely takes all of us working together to win truly transformational change. And I wanna just take a minute to thank key leaders who've been with us along the way and are with us today. First, this is just a list of our coalition members currently and I just wanna thank them. I just feel very honored to work in unity with all of you for so many years. Many of you are in the program later today and we'll be able to hear directly from your experience on working on PaveLeave. Next, I'd like to just start recognizing some of the incredible leaders and champions who helped advance California PaveLeave over the years and just made incredible contributions. So Angie Wei, co-chair of Governor Newsom's PaveLeave Task Force, helped push for SB1383, a really monumental bill that helped with job protection. She was also with the California Labor Federation during the very first fight for PaveLeave. Anna Leary, former chief of staff for Governor Newsom and really a longtime champion of equitable paid leave at the state and national level. Jessica Bartholo, great friend and great advocate for Pave Family Leave right now, working with Senator Skinner as their chief of staff doing great work. David Chu, who is a former assembly member and authored really innovative family leave policy and other family friendly policy and worked on a landmark bill that would help with language access for EDD. We just really appreciate working with David Chu. Ellen Bravo, founding director of Family Values at Work, just incredible leader of national paid leave work. Irma Herrera, who was the former ERA director and worked with us on the very first collective that fought for PaveLeave. Josie Calipeni, founder of the work director who's just incredible innovative leadership on paid leave right now. The national partnership for women and families has been with us from the start, even way before that, really at the start of the FMLA. They're just an incredible foundational group. A better balance fights for so much equity in paid leave and also is a great source of information if you're curious about how all our paid sick days and paid leave laws were. CLASP has been an incredible partner on research and organizing. Lisa Gardner was formerly Senator Jackson's chief of staff and you'll hear from Senator Jackson later today. And she played a critical role in extending job protection which ended up being a really long fight. Now we have it for six million more Californians. Thanks to Lisa and all the great work. Also Jennifer Richard, who you'll hear from, work with Senator Jackson now with Dorotso that you'll hear from her later, but also incredibly with us from the beginning. Lorena Gonzalez, now California Labor Federation has just been doing so much both behind the scenes and up front on paid leave. And we appreciate her leadership and glad she'll continue in her new role. Nancy Firestein, I mentioned earlier, obviously foundational to this work. Pat Xu, formerly of Legal Aid at Work and also the Department of Labor during the Obama administration. She was part of that first collective. Patrick Henning, former EDD director who was just a great friend to the advocates and a great friend to labor and has been a great friend to paid leave. Noreen Farrell, ERA, part of the very beginning and doing incredible work leading stronger California, a great network across the state. Senator Scott Wiener, he authored San Francisco's groundbreaking ordinance to provide 100% wage replacement for baby bonding in San Francisco. Great friend, supervisor and former state senator, Sheila Kuhl, just obviously foundational to this work. Marika Yoshihara, CELA has been really great with all of our work expanding paid leave. We couldn't do much of this without her. Wendy Chunhoon, former family vice work director now with the DOL, really proud to have worked with her. Next slide. So we have more incredible leaders that are joining us today in many cases. So the Secretary of California Labor and Workforce Development, Natalie Paluvi, is just like her predecessor Julie Chu, she's championed innovative and community centered outreach to connect families to paid leave during COVID and we really appreciate that so much. Assembly Member Buffy Wicks has this incredible bill that would extend paid leave or extend family leave to more families. Assembly Member Rendon, Kevin Kish, Director of the California Civil Rights Department. Assembly Member Cervantes, Latino Caucus Chair, Senator Gonzales, Latino Caucus Vice Chair, Chris Perry, who is the former senior advisor to Governor Newsom and co-chair of the TPL task force and has a long history on a lot of great issues we care about. Senator Acton's pro tem, her whole office has been really helpful to us. Senator Skinner, of course, super helpful with everything around paid leave and other issues. Attorney General Rob Bonta, former assembly member, my neighbor, well at least down the street, it's his birthday today. If you wanna wish him a happy birthday on Facebook. Supervisor Connie Chan, the San Francisco supervisor who also authored the Family Friendly Workplace Ordinance Amendments and she's been a great partner on these issues. Nancy Friarious, Director of EDD, we really enjoyed meeting with her on some issues recently. And Melissa Stone, Director of Disability Insurance Branch of the EDD who we meet with regularly to share what's happening in the field. We also have Marie Stemcelium, who's the senior advisor to labor work and workforce development and has been a longtime labor rights advocate. Mary Hernandez, Deputy Secretary for Legislation, Labor and Workforce Development Agency and David Rattray, my friend, retired CEO and President of United LA. Also Representative Judy Chu, who as a US representative has just been a really great on paid leave in her district and across the country. And of course, there's actually so many more that I'm just thinking of some who are speaking today like Representative Gomez, et cetera, who you'll hear from. It would be impossible to name everyone who's contributed and you'll be hearing from a lot of these advocates, like I said, and champions and also some great researchers in today's program. So let me just say we're only getting started and I really look forward to working with all of you to realize the vision of all people having the time and resources they need to care for themselves and their families. Thank you and I'm gonna hand it over to Alex DiCaprio who'll be emceeing this program today. And hello everyone, my name is Alex DiCaprio and I am a senior strategist at First Five California, California's commission on children and families. First up today, I have the pleasure of introducing California Governor Gavin Newsom and First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom. Paid leave champions themselves, they took time out of this very busy bill signing season to provide us with recorded remarks on what 20 years of paid leave has meant to working families in California. As many of you will recall, Governor Newsom campaigned on what he calls a parent's agenda with an expansion of paid leave at the forefront. And his goal was an ambitious one that by the end of his term, all babies born in California will be able to spend their first six months of life with a loving parent or caregiver, establishing a foundation for life success. One of his first actions as governor was to create a paid family leave task force to provide recommendations for how to achieve this goal. And I'm so proud to say that in 2020, we achieved step one of the recommendations expanding job protected leave to six million more Californians through the governor's passage of SD 1383 by Senator Jackson, who we will hear from today. We are so excited to be working with the governor and the first partner on the remaining task force recommendations, including increasing wage replacement rates to 90% for low income earners and look forward to the day when paid leave is accessible to all California workers who need it. Without further ado, Governor Gavin Newsom and First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom. 20 years ago, California passed a first in the nation paid leave program that has helped tens of millions of families take much needed time to bond with new children or care for seriously ill or injured family members. And since it was created, the state has continuously worked on the program, but we wanted more for Californians. We wanted to ensure that every working person in the state can fully benefit from the program. Everyone should have time after giving birth to bond with their child to start the healing process, to learn their child's rhythm and needs, and every working person should have time to care for or help their loved ones get the care they need regardless of gender, sexuality, or relationship. Yeah, that's why in 2019, we launched the Paid Family Leave Task Force to identify how we could make Californians paid family leave program even better for more Californians. And that includes some of you, many of you in fact, at this event. The task force provided recommendations to ensure that paid leave truly benefits all working people, leading to a substantial expansion of job protections under the California Family Rights Act, so more families have job security and can benefit from these programs. Our nation-leading paid leave program is family and small, business-friendly, and it creates an equitable and inclusive model, we believe, for the rest of the country. California's work on paid leave is complemented by our efforts to close the wage gap, our investments in early childhood, and our commitment to improving conditions for working people and their families. So with all of these efforts and the policies we've innovated right here in our state, we're building a stronger and happier California and creating at the same time, a model for others to follow. So thank you all for the roles you played in California's paid leave program. Cheers to two decades and many more. Next up, we are thrilled to be able to share a message provided by the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi. A lifelong champion for women, families, and caregivers, I cannot think of a better person to help us kick off today's celebration. Speaker Pelosi led the charge to ensure that paid family and medical leave was part of the final Build Back Better package that passed the House of Representatives last November. And over her entire tenure as the Democratic leader and speaker, she has brought issues related to women, children, and families into community and national conversations. While many of us were incredibly disappointed this year when the national paid family and medical leave program dropped out of the Senate negotiations, we know Speaker Pelosi, along with House Ways and Means Chairman, Richard Neal, continued forcing a dialogue even after others had given up. And for that, and for so many other things, we owe her a huge debt of gratitude. While we don't know when the United States will join every other industrialized nation in adopting a paid leave program, one thing we know for sure. When it does happen, and it will happen, it will undoubtedly be in large part to Speaker Pelosi's tenacity and unwillingness to settle for anything less than what our families deserve. And now, Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Good afternoon. As Speaker, it is my privilege to bring warm greetings from Democrats in Congress as Californians proudly celebrate 20 years of paid family leave. Thank you to the coalition of tireless advocates who have put together this wonderful event and who continue to guide us forward. Two decades ago, the working families of our state made history winning the country's first ever family leave policy. And in the years since, California has remained a model for the nation, paving the way for other states to follow our lead, while continuing to expand and strengthening the transformative achievement. Indeed, the fight is far from over. House Democrats are waging a battle to win paid family leave nationwide. Last year, we proudly voted to ensure no American has to choose between paying rent and caring for a loved one. We will not relent until paid family leave is the law of the land from coast to coast. But we can only get so far through our inside, with our inside maneuvering. We also need your outside advocacy and mobilization. Thank you for knowing your power and for devoting your time, energy and talents to this fight. Congress and the country are grateful for all that you have achieved and for all you continue to do. Best wishes for a lovely 20th anniversary celebration. And thank you. Big thanks to Governor and First Partner Newsome and Speaker Pelosi for those inspiring and grounding remarks. We are now going to shift our attention to the three incredible panels we have for you today. And as a reminder, we will be using Slido to submit questions. So Slido is the box located to the right of the video. Throughout today's event, you'll also be asking a series of polling questions to get to know our audience, which we would love for you to participate in. These polls can also be found in the Slido embed. If you have any questions or issues, please contact events at newamerican.org. Okay, we are thrilled to have Eleanor Moller, a labor reporter with the news organization Politico to moderate our first panel, celebrating legislative leadership and progress. A DC-based reporter, Eleanor describes her passion as vividly illustrating economic policy and its effects on real people. She has written extensively about paid leave in childcare, as well as organized labor, unemployment insurance, workforce development, wages, inflation, workplace safety and a multitude of other work-related issues. Over the next 30 minutes, we're excited to dive into the history and politics of paid leave policy as it developed in California and the implications the state's policy has for the country. Take it away, Eleanor. Thank you so much for having me and thank you so much for that lovely introduction. Nothing more to add, really. So I'm gonna go ahead and introduce our panelists. We've got Representative Jimmy Gomez, who is, of course, a member of Congress from California's District 34, which includes Los Angeles. He's also a former state assembly member. And throughout both of these roles, he's championed paid leave from authoring improvements to California's paid family leave program to being a key member of the Powerful House Ways and Means Committee, which passed paid family medical leave for the first time last year. We also have Senator Hanna Beth Jackson, who is a former member of the California Senate, representing District 19. She's a champion for gender equity and the author of bills that would improve California's paid leave program by expanding the definition of family members who are eligible for the benefit and expanding job protections. Last but not least, we've got Jennifer Richards, who is the former Chief of Staff to State Senator Maria Elena DiRazzo, former Chief of Staff to Senator Jackson, and a former staffer to the then Senator Sheila Kuhl, who is now the LA County Supervisor and the original author of California's paid leave program. Before we begin our panel, we're going to hear from Maria, who is currently champion SB 951, a bill to improve California's wage replacement that has passed both chambers of the legislature and is now awaiting signature by the governor. Just a note, you will hear Senator DiRazzo mention two other California paid leave pioneers whose schedules badly prevented them from being here today. I want to begin by thanking the New America Foundation and the other organizations for sponsoring this event. I also want to acknowledge the work of the other elected officials on today's panel. We owe a debt of gratitude to all of them. Congressman Jimmy Gomez, former State Senator Hanna Beth Jackson, current LA Supervisor Sheila Kuhl for creating the nation's first paid family leave and my friend and former assembly member Lorena Gonzalez for laying the foundation for my bill, SB 951. Workers making under $20,000 per year make up 37% of those who pay into the fund, but only 14% of paid family leave claims. This isn't because lower income families are experiencing fewer health crisis or pregnancies. They are just being forced to keep working through them. California's low benefit rate unfairly harms Latina mothers in particular, nearly three in five of whom live below federal poverty line. For that reason, I introduced SB 951, which would provide lower paid workers earning less than $57,000 a year, a 90% wage replenishment. As I record this, the bill is on the governor's desk, awaiting his signature by September 30th. The governor has a clear decision to make. He can let California fall even further behind or he can sign SB 951 and ensure that all Californians are able to benefit from these important programs. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for providing that video. So I'm excited to dive into our conversation today. And Jennifer, I actually want to start with you because you have served so many of these lawmakers that have been at the forefront of the passage and efforts to improve California's paid leave program for the last two decades. That of course is included, but by no means limited to the current push for SB 951. You've really had a front row seat and been in the trenches from the very beginning. I'm curious, from your perspective, what are you most proud of? And can you talk a little bit about what that process has looked like of helping the program grow over time? I'd say I'm most proud of having been involved with the creation of the paid family leave program and having worked with this incredible group of advocates over the past 20 years on helping to enhance that program. When we first introduced that bill, they thought it would be at least a five year campaign to try to get that through. And I don't think the folks who are making those estimates carefully enough evaluated how fiercely people will fight to protect their families and really paid family leave is about protecting our families. It's a very core issue, I think, for a lot of Americans. And there was much greater support with the general public because of that. And that gave us the lift that we needed to actually move that program through and establish it here in California. And over the years, we've worked to improve that program to serve the needs of more and more Californians. When you staff a bill, you hear very quickly praise and gratitude for that get going into law. And then shortly after that, concerns about things that it's missing, the people that don't benefit, that folks feel that they should have benefited from it. And we heard right away after paid family leave went into law about additional family members, like a very compelling letter from a sister who had gone and spent weeks with her dying brother to care for him at the very end of her life and how, though she paid into the program, she was not able to access the benefits for the need that she had to care for her family at the time of need. And years later, with Senator Hanna-Beth Jackson, that law was changed to expand to cover more family members. And I know Assembly Member Wicks has legislation to cover even more family members through our family of choice, which is particularly important to the queer community. And likewise, we also heard about the need for low-income Californians to be able to access this benefit program.  And a lot of folks just can't do that. So they narrow the amount of time that they're out, not to meet their family's needs, but just to survive so that they can put on the table and keep their apartments. But they're paying for this benefit just like all other Californians. And so it's been important for us to continue to press to enhance the benefit for those low-wage workers. Absolutely. Representative Gomez, I want to go next to you. I understand that you are joining us from your own paternity leave. Yeah, no, I am. It's definitely been an experience. I've learned a lot since my wife became pregnant and we, during those few months, those nine months, and then plus the birth of the child and then just kind of what they call the fourth trimester. And a lot of the challenges. And it is challenging under the best circumstances, having the resources, having the income, having health insurance, all of that makes it having children and take care of children extremely challenging. And we're quite fortunate. And I just try to remember how my mom did it when she had six kids work minimally at his jobs, four to five a week to make ends meet. And they got by, but it's not about getting by. It's really about making sure that the mother is healthy, the baby is healthy, and the family is better off in the long-term. So it's been eye-opening on some respects. I learned something about postpartum preclampsia, which I had no idea was a thing. And it often is undiagnosed. And most women, I think, some staggering statistic of the number of women that die after birth is because that's not caught. And there's very limited research on it. So it's something that, it's made me kind of think about things a little bit differently, but we definitely need to broaden and strengthen paid family for everyone, especially to make sure that the, especially for the lower income individuals that don't have the resources and their savings accounts in order to hire doulas or nannies or caregivers to help them get by in those difficult times. But I think this is a celebration of the 20 years of the passage of the paid family leave in California. If it wasn't for that program, we wouldn't be having the discussion now about a national program. This is, and I think that California should be proud of it. And it was not a perfect program. We had to kind of think about it and see how people used it and how employers used it and then started tweaking it over the years, right? Legislation isn't perfect when you first pass it. It's never perfect. What you're doing is you're tweaking it along the way. So everybody from Hannah Beth Jackson to my bill AB 908, everything has been to, how do you make it better and more accessible and have the impact that you want? So we're on our way here in California. I'm glad Marielena has taken up the mantle of a higher wage replacement.  When I got to Congress, nobody was talking about equity. We've been talking about equity for over, at least in my, since I got elected to the state assembly back in 2012. Got to Congress in 2017 and I talked about equity and people looked at me like I was crazy. So it is how we build broad base support for any kind of policy, but especially for paid family where we really do wanna have the people at lower runs of economic ladder get those direct benefits. So people should be proud of what we've done. Let's keep moving forward and then use what we've learned in California to justify why we need a program at the federal level because we know what we're better off today than we were back in the early 2000s. Yeah, you touched on this a little bit, but I'm curious, you know, one of the things that you've championed has been a higher wage replacement rate. How does that, you know, address all of these issues of equity that you speak to when it comes to, you know, racial, ethnic and economic parity? Yeah, one of the things that we, when I read a lot of the reports from the 10 year report that was done by the Senate Labor Committee that kind of explained some things and having discussions with folks. And it's pretty much they, we've described it as a three-legged stool, job protection, making sure people can go back to the job that they had, the wage replacement, right? And knowing about the program. A lot of people still don't know about the program. So wage replacement was one of the barriers. When you're making above $80,000 or $100,000, you have more savings than somebody's making $45,000 or $50,000 or less. And they can subsidize whatever they don't get. If the wage replacement is 65%, well, they can subsidize their own with their own money. But working class people can't do that. My parents worked, you know, like I said, four to five jobs a week and barely survived on 100% of their income. So what makes anybody think that they can take time off at 55% and these workers are paying into this program. So we kind of saw that as a barrier and we still need to look, is that enough, right? Increase in the wage replacement, is that enough in order to get people to use the program or are there other barriers? You know, just knowing about it was a big barrier. Back when I was in the legislature, we put $3 million for outreach. Maybe that's not enough. Maybe you need to do 10 million with the surplus they have at the state level. We should be doing more to encourage people to take the time, but it's not easy. I know Hannah Beth Jackson worked on bills to lower the threshold of what kind of size business that it applied to, right? So wage replacement is key. And I think the more progressive it is, the more likelihood people are gonna use it. And here's the thing. As long as everybody gets a little bit of a boost, right? The higher income folks get a higher, a little bit higher wage replacement, they're fine. They're gonna support the bill. We didn't get really any backlash from it. So it's how you kind of structure these programs. We want people to say like, yeah, it's no brainer.  And that will be better for those families, but it'll also be better for our country and our communities as a whole. So wage replacement is key. But we also have to look at all the other little barriers that prevent people from accessing a program that they pay into here at the state level, but then figure out what we can do at the federal level. Yeah, definitely. Well, speaking of those barriers, I mean, Senator Jackson, you have served, of course in the state legislature for years, but you've worked on initiatives around, job protections around paid leave. And that's something that you and I were discussing before. We got on the Zoom call just now. Your work succeeded in a huge way in 2020 when the California Family Rights Act was amended to cover workers in smaller businesses, which extended coverage to six million more workers. Can you walk us through what that effort looked like and why job protections as a whole make such a big difference when it comes to paid leave? Sure, well, part of it is that, as Jimmy mentioned, and congratulations on your new status. I wanna just point out how wonderful it is when men participate in those particularly early moments and early months, they create a lifelong bond with their children. It benefits the child as well. It benefits the mom. And we've had to fight for that too. We had to fight to get 12 weeks of job protection for women and new parents to be able to bond with their newborns. And by the fact, all the data, all the evidence, all the information makes it very clear how beneficial this is to the family, to the child, but it's a battle and this has been a battle. We had paid family leave and as Jennifer pointed out, we're working with the great Sheila Kuhl to get this passed in the first place. We were the first in the country, fast forward 20 years later, and we're still one of a very few states that has this. It was one of the first things that got jettisoned in the federal package. So we had paid family leave, but the question was who was it applying to? Who was able to take it? And one of the things that we discovered when I introduced SB 1383 was, first of all, the definition of family. You know, the 21st century family is very different than the 19th century family, or the 20th century family. As Jen pointed out, we have people caring for their siblings, caring for a grandparent, caring for a grandchild who were not able to take family because the definition of family was too narrow. So we were able to expand that so that more people can care for their loved ones. But we also noted that a lot of people weren't taking the leave. For the very simple reason is that you could take the leave, you could get a partial reimbursement, but you could get fired.  So what we did and fought hard for, and I wanna thank the governor for his efforts, Ann O'Leary. I wanna thank the organizations on this call today. This was an enormous battle that we won literally with three minutes left to go in that legislative session to get this bill passed. Why? Because corporations are still in many respects living in the 19th and 20th century. We are the 21st century. People don't live to work, they work to live. And I think that's a distinction that we need to address going forward, that we started to address with this legislation that says if you have the need to care for a loved one and we expanded the definition of family as I mentioned, you get to take 12 weeks of job protected leave. Now, not all of it is paid. Not all of it is necessarily paid. You are entitled under California law to eight weeks of paid leave, which by the way, you pay for. And one of the things that I think has to be noted and emphasized is that the employer doesn't pay a dime into the paid family leave system. It is all paid by the employee. The employer, the only thing the employer is required to do is to maintain health insurance. If they provided health insurance, they have to maintain it for obvious reasons. You're going through health crisis with your family. So it was really important that we address the reasons why people were not taking the leave. No guaranteed job when they came back to it. We are also addressing the fact that has been mentioned on several occasions that the amount of reimbursement has got to increase particularly for our lower wage workers who literally can't afford to take the time at 75% reimbursement rate, which was something that then assembly member Gomez was able to get past 75% for our lower wage workers. That isn't enough. So what we've done and what we must continue to do is remember that people have this need to take leave, to take care of themselves and their families and they need to be assured that their jobs are going to be available to them when they come back. It's good for the family. It's good for the job. It's good for the employer. When you have workers who come back after leave they're refreshed, they appreciate the fact they've been able to deal with their family crisis. They tend to be more loyal. All the data, all the statistics show that this is a win-win and that's why we need to keep fighting that battle. We're gonna hear a lot more about the research and the business aspects of paid leave in the next two panels, but I wanna dig into the politics behind paid leave and all of these various improvements we've touched on. Paid leave, I mean, it's one of those weird policies where it has very high levels of public support across party lines, both in California and at a national level, but as you know, I mean, enacting these improvements has not always been the most straightforward process. So Senator Jackson, I mean, from your perspective, what are some of the key forces that are limiting progress on paid leave in California and how have you worked with advocates but also other lawmakers to overcome them? Well, one of the biggest challenges has been working with the business community, the fact that they operate on an old model. If you don't show up for work, you can be fired. We don't care what's going on in your personal life. We prioritize, we value a person, their work persona more than their personal persona. And so people have been forced to work in circumstances where they are oftentimes less productive and frequently we'll have to leave a job because the demands are greater than they can meet. And so we have to work with the business world. The business community needs to better understand and frankly, one of the biggest challenges anytime we try to modify the workplace is the Chamber of Commerce. They come to us with an old model of work and it's very difficult to get flexibility, very difficult to get them to recognize that they really benefit. When you have workers who are happy, when you have workers who are fulfilled, when you have workers who can take care of the other part of their lives, they're better workers, they're more efficient, they're more productive, they're more loyal. I mean, and I'm assuming that we'll see that in the next couple of panels. But the work environment, we have this fear factor. In fact, when we reduced from what was then 50 employees down to five, a company with five employees has to accommodate this leave. Working with those people, recognizing there are ways to make this work rather than just to say no or just to say, I need to get rid of that employee to be able to work with these companies. Ultimately, they discover that it is a benefit to them. So changing the discussion, changing the framework for the work of the future and of the present has really been part of the challenge. And the power, frankly, of groups like the Chamber of Commerce, some of the business community that is opposed to these kinds of reforms has really been the most daunting task. But when we have groups like those that are here today, when we have determined legislators like Sheila Kuhl, like Jimmy Gomez, like Buffy Wicks, like Maria Elena DeRazzo, and many of those that you listed early on in the front of this discussion, we are able to make those changes. And of course, got to give credit to the governor and the first partner who made this a commitment of theirs coming in the door. And you know, and I think Jimmy will agree, when you have four kids, you get it. You understand the challenges associated with being a good parent, as well as doing good and doing well at the job at which you work. Jennifer, your boss is one of those who has been working so hard to champion improvements to California's paid leave program, including those wage replacement rates that we spoke about earlier. What needs to happen next in terms of next steps? The next step is for the governor to sign that bill. It would provide 90% wage replacement for lower wage workers. Those earning roughly less than in the mid 50s and below and all other workers would see 70% wage replacement. So it would be a bump up for all Californians taking paid family leave and a tremendous benefit. And he has eight days to sign or veto it. Is there any kind of effort underway to sway him to sign the bill? We're asking everybody to reach out to the governor's office to tweet about it, to post on social media, to make sure their support for the measure is known. Gotcha. Moving out to a federal level, Representative Gomez, you worked closely with House Ways and Means Chair, Richard Neal, as well as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to ensure that paid leave was included in that Build Back Better iteration that passed last November. Wow, I can't believe it was in November. But progress was solved as we know, mostly by one Democrat, he who will not be named and all of the Republicans in the Senate, I'll phrase it this way. I mean, what do you think the people who are standing in the way of paid leave don't understand? And what is the best way of conveying that to them? Well, I learned in my days in the legislature that oftentimes elected officials use policy as an excuse of how they're voting for something, but politics is the reason why they're voting for something. And in order to kind of get down to the political reasons, you got to like swat down any of their excuses.  Well, it's like, well, it's kind of hard to pretend that you had a kid or not, right? Or that you're pregnant or not. So it's a lot of there's excuses, they just don't hold any water.  Is it like, is the business community your estate or you just don't believe in it? And it seems like for some members, they just don't believe in that concept, right? I think it's a little outdated. I mean, every industrialized country on the place of the planet has some version of paid family, which is more generous. I had a friend who was recently married to somebody from Belarus. And I told her how I thought it was a big deal about my paid family bill and how much it provides for time off and she laughed, right? She just laughed. It was Belarus. It's not like an economic juggernaut, it is. And I think that's kind of where we're at. We're kind of in the, we're isolated on the idea that people should be able to take time off. So we're in a good place though, like I just wanna remind people up until a few years ago, we didn't have hearings on paid family even ways and means. We didn't have these broad based discussion. So we've moved the ball forward, but that's also because the states are the laboratory of democracy and good public policy. Fun, bad public policy if you go to like on other issues like Texas and Florida and other issues, but we're spreading the word of paid family, more people are believing in it, more people are asking for it. And there will be a pressure one day that they want a national program because it's easier. The trick is to make sure that every national program that is implemented doesn't undermine the progress that we made on our paid family program here in California. We're not gonna trade a program in California that might be the gold standard for a program at the national level for all these other states that it was where we were 20, 30 years ago. That's not gonna, we don't wanna be there. So we gotta knock down those concerns and then give them the flexibility for a national program that makes sense that doesn't undermine what the states have done given their individual program. So we're not done. This is getting it past the house was a big deal. Now we need to make sure that we can do it again and again and again until we get the Senate to take it up and pass it. Awesome. So we've got time here for one audience question for our panel members as a reminder. You can submit questions using a slide out. Let's do this as a popcorn round because I would love to get everyone's two cents in and I think it's especially relevant. So we saw last week both Republicans and Democrats introduced paid leave as part of a broader messaging package around specifically reproductive rights and kind of this idea that these are the things we need to have in place if women in the US are not able to access abortion now that Roe versus Wade has been overturned. Let's just start with you, Jennifer. I mean, how does paid leave connect to reproductive rights and how has that Supreme Court decision really affected the conversation around paid leave? Well, there's a very strong link between paid family leave and maternal and child wellness without paid family leave. People have to make a very difficult decision about how much time, despite their doctor's recommendations, some people are taking less time off prior to the birth of their child because they simply can't afford it or because they're hoping that maybe they can squeeze out a couple of weeks with the baby after the baby's born and when they make those, they're put in that devil's decision, they're placing their own life at risk and the child's life potentially at risk there and when people have robust paid family leave benefits, they're more likely to take the early care that they need. If they need bed rest before birth and have time to recover from a child birth and representative Gomez talked about the risk that still is present for women after a child is born and how important that post birth period is for care for the mother. Paid family leave can be used for accessing the doctor's care. It can be, it's very important to families and also knowing that there are weeks available to bond with that child after the child comes into your life is very important in the, mothers are more healthy when their partners take leave to help with the baby after the baby's born, the whole family overall does better because of paid family leave. And we have to look, if we care about reproductive choice we should look at the whole panoply of reproductive health issues and concerns for women and this is definitely a strong and important part of that. As Senator Jackson will go next to you what's your view of how reproductive rights overlap with paid leave? Well, I think it's really important that we shouldn't use paid leave as an excuse to deny women the right to reproductive choice. I think that's critically important but or and I should say if a woman does wish to go through with a pregnancy there certainly should be those options available as a matter of fact. It's a question of respect. We know that women who are able to take time to bond with their newborns are something like third less likely to go through postpartum depression. We know that their mental health improves by their ability to provide that nurturing. We know that the infant benefits. We know that having a partner share the experience a non biological parent but who is still a parent creates a lifelong bond. Nothing like getting up at two o'clock in the morning and changing diapers and having to do a feeding and then being up again at four. I mean, there's a real commitment that's made and I think it's critically important that we have greater respect for the whole process greater respect for the woman per decision making and we need to support that. We are the only frankly industrialized country in the world that does not and it's inexcusable that we don't. So I think that it is part of our whole discussion but again, they are not mutually exclusive and we need to make sure that women have that choice regardless but that certainly if we are truly serious about the health of mothers, the health of babies the health of families that paid family leave has to be there in a robust and realistic fashion. Congressman Gomez-Lasin at least seeing that question. Yeah, at first I agree with the senator about which is more respect for women when it comes to the issue pregnancy and birth and just all around actually to an extent where I jumped around I said, I don't even know why babies have the last name of a man. Really, to be honest with you it was just what I saw my wife go through I was like, wow. And maybe that's why we named my son Hodge Grant Gomez Hodge after my wife's last name as a tribute for being a big part of this. But besides that, I don't first don't buy the premise of the Republican messaging because it is just messaging. I don't believe that they're pro family, pro values at all. Cause they have had time and time and time again to show that they value families. And if you look at the states that are more likely to ban abortion rights in this country are the same states that are haven't expanded Medicaid access in their states under the Affordable Care Act. And if you overlap that with maternal mortality rates those are the same states that have the highest maternal mortality rates in this country, right? And so it's not a surprise. If they wanted to be pro family, pro mother, pro child they can do something right now and expand that coverage under the Affordable Care Act and have a tremendous impact on the mortality rates of mothers in this country and especially in their given states. So I don't buy this premise that, you know, oh, if they're gonna not gonna or not have access to abortion in this country or across state, we need to do X, Y and Z. Right now women are dying because of decisions that they've made and they still haven't taken steps to correct it. When they had a chance to renew and expand the child tax credit when we actually made it fully refundable means anybody can get it and advanceable. That means you get that payment every month that child poverty in this country by 60%, 40 to 60% depending on where you live. They continuously vote against it. So, and their pay family programs at the federal level wanna take money from Social Security in order to pay for it. So for me, the Republican talking points that they're gonna be more family friendly well, they have the chance now and they're not doing it. So I don't fall for their ideas of what they're gonna do if abortion becomes outlawed in their states or nationally. Well, thank you so much, Congressman Gomez, Senator Jackson and Jennifer Richard for joining us today. But at the end of our panel, it could have definitely I think gone much longer but we are at time. So thank you so much for participating and you know, everyone watching, thank you for tuning in. What an incredible panel that was and a great segue into our next round of speakers. I am now so excited to once again welcome Vicky Shabo, senior fellow for paid leave policy and strategy at New America's Better Life Lab to moderate our second panel, research-based lessons from California's historic paid leave program. Vicky is one of the nation's leading experts on gender equity and work. At New America, she focuses on charting a path to winning paid family and medical leave for every working person in the United States no matter where they live or work or the job they hold. She works closely with lawmakers and advocates to win and advance policies in Congress and in state houses across the country. Over the next 25 minutes, we're going to dig into the evidence that California's paid leave program has generated demonstrating positive effects on women's labor force participation, maternal and child health, reduced nursing home use and dispelling any concerns about impacts on the economy. Pretty impressive. In this panel, several of the nation's foremost paid leave researchers will highlight the key findings from the research, including areas of improvement to increase accessibility and uptake. Over to you, Vicky. Thanks so much, Alex, and hello again, everyone. We have a packed panel with a short period of time today. We will barely do justice to the incredible body of research that's resulted from analysis of California's 20 years of paid leave. Early research showed the impact of paid leave on leave taking rates, on gendered patterns of leave and factors that increase leave taking among men, return to work for moms and caregivers, reduction in nursing home use and public dollars spent on Medicaid, SNAP and public assistance and on benefits and lack of harms to businesses. The research also shows where the program falls short and has helped to bolster improvements in California and more equitably design policies across the country. I'm really excited to introduce the panel whose expertise reflects the importance of paid leave across the lifespan. So I'm gonna briefly introduce the panelists and then we'll get right into it. First, we've got Will Dow, Professor of Public Health Policy and Management at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health. Next, Henry Lee, a neonatologist, a neonatal and perinatal clinician, Professor of Pediatrics at Stanford University. Jeff Bellisario, Executive Director of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute. Maya Rossenslater, an associate professor in the Department of Public Health Policy at Stanford University School of Medicine. Pam Winston, Office of Human Services Policy, the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the US Department of Health and Human Services and Professor Douglas Wolff of Public Administration Professor and a professor of aging studies at Syracuse University.  We are gonna dig right in because we wanna get to everything and still wrap up in time for the incredible third panel. So Maya, I'm gonna start with you and we're sort of going through the lifespan here with the research. Maya, you along with your co-authors, Jane Waldbogel, Chris Ruhm and Bartel and others have done a considerable number of studies on California's paid leave program and paid leave programs in other states. I wanna know from what stands out to you most about the value of paid leave for workers and for low income women in particular? And then talk a little about the research you did during the pandemic about businesses. Sure, thank you so much for having me as part of this wonderful event. It's really an honor to be here. So yes, I've been studying the topic of paid family leave and the impacts of paid leave on workers, families and businesses for about a decade now. A key takeaway that has come out of the big literature on this topic is that paid family leave has meaningful benefits for workers and their families, especially with regards to child and maternal health. And this comes along with no major costs or burdens for the employer. So for example, California's policy has been shown to reduce preventable hospitalizations during infancy, increase breastfeeding duration and improve maternal mental health. The impacts on labor outcomes and career trajectories among women are a bit more mixed but the bottom line is that there are no large negative effects as some critics have suggested that there could be. In addition, we found that the introduction of California's program substantially increased leave take-up among disadvantaged families in particular, so that reduced preexisting disparities and leave use along racial and socioeconomic lines. And then the other thing that we have learned is that employers seem to play an important role in the extent to which workers use the program. So for example, in California, there's a substantial amount of variation in paid leave take-up between workers who are actually similar on various characteristics such as their wages, but they work for different employers. And so we think that this might happen for two main reasons. One is the extent to which employers provide accurate and useful information about the program to their workers. And two is the overall culture regarding leave use in that company. So I think one takeaway from this is that one way to increase access to the use of the program is by working more directly with employers and business groups to spread accurate and easy to understand information about the benefits and who's eligible for them and so on. And I think that's important in light of our most recent work on employers, which has found that the introduction of New York's paid leave policy, which was in 2018, did not have any detectable negative impact on small businesses in terms of things like their ability to manage their employee schedules, turnover, profitability. And moreover, lastly, we found that small employers are actually overwhelmingly supportive of their state's paid leave programs and the support has actually increased during the COVID pandemic. I'll stop here. Thank you so much, Maya. I really appreciate it. And we'll hopefully have a little time for back and forth here. Henry, I want to turn to you. You work with parents and babies in NICU. I want to know sort of from that vantage point, what value do you see for NICU families? What questions do you have that haven't been answered and what work is left to be done? Thank you so much for this opportunity, Vicky. Yeah, so as a neonatologist, I help care for babies in the NICU and many who are born preterm. And so they may be in the hospital for three to four months after birth. And as context, the United States has one of the highest neonatal infant mortality rates amongst developed countries in the world. And a large part of that is due to the U.S. also having very high preterm birth rates in which there are large disparities by social groups, including race ethnicity. And so the implementation of Pave Leave program, the program in California, has been demonstrated to have led to a decrease in post neonatal infant mortality rates.  But so having that impact of infant mortality being reduced, you might also think that there has to be some other benefits that are sort of in the middle there. And so I think there needs to be further research in that regard, particularly for babies who are born preterm. And we know that being born preterm, a parent being at the bedside in the NICU can really help to stabilize their physiologic status. It will help the optimal provision of breast milk, which we know is critical for a preterm baby's health and for their brain development as well. So preterm birth occurring at a time, probably of course unexpected during pregnancy might lead to an employer as well as the worker not necessarily being ready. And so accommodating that time off is very critical for a family to be engaged with their baby in the NICU. So for these reasons, Pave Leave programs helped the mother and the baby, the family. I think there's still work to do in trying to see how we can implement these existing policies better for families in the NICU. Thank you. Yeah, so many stories about parents who just can't be there or need to either decide to be with their baby in the NICU or be with their baby when they get out or maybe not at all. So thank you for your work and for that. Pam, I wanna turn to you. Your work has focused on the utilization of Pave Leave programs and it's really interesting qualitative research, in particular looking at low income families. And I'm wondering what you have to add based on that work and your longstanding research on this issue. Yeah, sure. So our office conducted extensive focus groups and interviews with lower income mothers focusing on their time around childbirth. And most of the moms that we talked with use Pave Leave, some did not. So we had some point of comparison. And we heard from the vast majority of mothers who took leave about what they perceived as really invaluable benefits in having at least some subsidized time off to be with their babies and to bond. They also talked about using the time to recover physically and emotionally to address baby's healthcare needs or touching on what Henry was talking about and to just establish new family routines, develop some sense of stability of kind of a new normal to establish breastfeeding that came up repeatedly even though it wasn't one of the focuses of our study. And also to transition to pumping in anticipation of going back to work. Making childcare arrangements took time and that was a critical use for the time they had off at PFL. And we kept hearing from mothers just about the idea of letting the baby get a little bit older before he or she had to go to non-parental care, which was a source of anxiety for a lot of the parents we talked with. And then I guess finally just getting ready logistically and emotionally to return to work. They did say that pay family need helped them make that transition back to work. And that took a little bit of time. Many said it was really hard to make ends meet on the partial range of basement that made them provided that virtually all of them said that they very much valued having the subsidy.  And others did it without the program they had ended up going back to work within weeks or even days. What was striking was that pay family leave appeared to have the greatest positive impact and importance for the lowest income mothers that we talked with. About 40% of our folks had household incomes under 25,000 a year. And also those with the least family support and those with the most physically demanding jobs. And I just want to end with the words of one single mom in California who said that at least for those, at least for those weeks, one is at peace. Just very, sort of placed a very high value on this time of sort of being able to focus on their kids and their lives for the change. Wow, at peace. Thanks a few. So we've talked a lot about moms and about the mom's peace. Will, I know you've done a lot of work on dads. You were instrumental in studying the early effects of a San Francisco policy that actually tops up the wage replacement in the state program at the city level. I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about that research and your work overall in this space. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Vicki, for including me in this celebration and again, kudos to everyone who is involved in this trailblazing work over the last 20 years. So I've been doing work trying to understand the San Francisco paid parental leave ordinance and what we can learn from that. So that was an ordinance that required employers to top up the wage replacement through the state paid family leave program. So during the bonding time to pay 100% of wages. And this is something that's already been talked about is the importance of raising that replacement rate for lower income families, especially. And the first thing that we found is echoing what other people have said employers were strongly supportive of this even though this was coming out of the employer's pocket. Employers are also members of families and they strongly support doing this. And so that was really important because we don't always get that message coming out of some of the employer organizations in this space. Second, we found that although all women are taking time postnatally, they need to biologically, not many men are and we've seen that increase over time as Vicki you said in your earlier comments. But what we saw in this particular program is it enabled more men financially to take that time off to be home during the bonding period. And that's so important for the baby, for the mother as well as to continue socializing the acceptability of leave taking. So I think that that was really nice to see. Now, however, having said that, we do find that many of our lower income women in the Bay Area still do not have good understanding of the state benefits to which they're eligible. And this is especially true of lower socioeconomic status of women. So we're seeing that still even though this is narrowed over time black and Hispanic mothers are much less likely to claim the state paid family leave benefits that they're entitled to. So working black mothers, for example, receive on average three weeks fewer of paid parental leave. So at minimum wage, that's about $2,000 of benefits that they paid into the system for that they're not getting. And so there are resources out there to try to help families understand about this what they're eligible for but having a state level program, a navigator type program could be incredibly beneficial for so many of these families that aren't getting the access that they need. And this is especially for lower educated families, immigrant families and others are more vulnerable. And finally, what we learned in this work is that although the program works very well for formal sector employees, the state paid family leave wasn't designed to be well suited for those working outside of permanent formal sector jobs. And so many of our vulnerable families have tenuous attachments to the formal labor sector. So moving forward, I would really encourage us all to think more broadly about how to expand benefit eligibility for all new parents regardless of their work sector. But again, thank you. This is a phenomenal panel today. Thanks so much, Will, so much to unpack in there and so much that's consistent with other research as well the navigator point in particular, some other research that's shown that it's like high road employers who tell their workers about the program and make sure they use it, which just reinforces some of the inequities that already exist in the structure of the program itself and part of what folks who are hosting this event and others are trying to solve with some of the legislative changes. Doug, I'm gonna turn next to you. We've talked a lot here about the parental leave portion. You and your colleague, Kanika Arora, studied the family caregiving portion and in particular nursing home use. You're an expert in aging and caregiving. I wonder if you can talk a bit about your research findings and how this program works for families and people with their own health conditions and for caregivers. Sure, well, like everyone else, thank you very much, Vicki, for including me in this terrific event. So it's widely known that quite a substantial percentage of employed people they have to confront the need for care of some sort, care or assistance on the part of a family member or some other close person, often an older parent or possibly their spouse. Now, balancing the demands of paid employment with the demands of unpaid care to a family member. And let's just focus on the case of the elderly parent. That balancing can be quite challenging and taking time off from work to provide care can be costly in terms of foreground wages, if nothing else. Now, in the absence of family care, the options are basically a family member. Paid in-home care provider or institutional care, which can be very expensive. So along come California's terrific innovation of paid family leave, which includes caregiving leave, which makes it less costly for an employed person to take time away from work, to help attend to their elderly parent or some other family members' care needs. And by doing so, it creates the potential to alter the mix of long-term care services provided and used by the needy elderly population. And that's what we looked at. We looked at the first four years after California's law went into effect comparing it to the four years prior and to other states that didn't have such a law. And we focused on nursing home use. And I think we were quite surprised to find a significant impact. It's gonna sound like a small number. What we found was that on average, during those four years after California's law went into effect, the percentage of people 65 or above in the state of California, who spent some time in a nursing home during a year, went down by half or more of a percentage point. So in absolute terms, that's not a big number. But relative to everyone that is in nursing homes, it's actually quite impressive. It was over an 11% decline in nursing home use. And we actually did some rough calculations. Well, how many people does that translate to? Well, it's over 21,000 people spending some time in a nursing home in a year. And that's enough to actually fill over 200 average nursing homes in the state of California. So it's impressive. So the message I would like to convey to the advocates and the policy makers in this arena is, we've heard from the previous panelists about the many benefits to individuals, to workers and their families, and to the offspring of these people, paid leave. But there's also public benefits. And the ones I think we need to pay more attention to are possibly reduced Medicare expenditures, reduced Medicaid expenditures for long-term care in nursing homes, which can be very, very expensive. The cost of a week of time off with the replacement rates that the California's program produces is much, much less than the cost of a week in a nursing home. And I think we need to be looking at this more and knowing more about it and figuring out ways to encourage even greater use of this benefit. Great, Doug, thank you so much. And such important work there. And we often hear from one of the things that opponents like to say is that this costs too much. And one of the things that I think a lot of us say back with the help of all of the work that you all have done is that this is a program that pays for itself and more and that people are absorbing and the system is absorbing all sorts of costs right now because of the status quo. So Jeff, I'm gonna turn to you and you may be our closer here because we are running short on time unfortunately. I'd love for you to talk a little bit about the work that the Bay Area Council did. Bay Area Council is a council of employers. So you come from the business perspective and the economic perspective here. I'm wondering if you can talk about the research and the two or three things that really stuck with you about business and economic impacts. Yeah, yeah. Of course, thanks so much, Vicki. I really appreciate the opportunity to be here. So yeah, the Bay Area Council is a business group. We were one of the first business groups in the state to really come out in support of Paid Family Leave. We sat on the governor's task force in 2019 and 2020 worked on various expansions that have since passed. Really the research that we did was meant to inform that task force, but more so kind of dispel some of the myths around Paid Family Leave and how it might have impacts, negative impacts on small businesses in particular. So just a couple of our findings and Maya mentioned some of these, we really found no change at all in firm closure rates, particularly among small businesses that had an employee use Paid Family Leave compared to those that did not. So there are no massive waves of business closure across industry or firm sizes that see employees actually take part of the Paid Family Leave program. So that's one, two, there's actually a benefit to businesses often. We actually found a 14% decrease in labor costs in firms that had an employee use Paid Family Leave. So a lot of people talk about the need for overtime or the need to hire to replace, but actually that retention over time actually provides big savings for small businesses. And then lastly, kind of a more overall economic impact. We found that for women that were taking part in the Paid Family Leave program, actually their employment rates were 3% higher than in absence of the program. In particular for women age 30 to 34, we actually found nearly a 5% 5 percentage point employment increase. So that's more dollars in the economy, more money being spent, more help for small businesses often too. And that money circulates in the economy. So really, we point to our research and our work on the task force is kind of pushing this conversation forward. We've brought many more small businesses and large businesses to the table in support of Paid Family Leave. Thank you. I am so tempted to ask you all follow up questions, but we need to get to our next speakers and our next panel because they really put a human face on what this program means, as well as provide more context to some of what Jeff was talking about. So I apologize to the panel for running out of time here. We have gotten a question about whether folks can access your research and your data. And so I would invite you all to send us studies that you would like disseminated to the audience and we can make that available in a follow up email to folks. Doug, Maya, Henry, Will, Pam and Jack, thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for all of the work that you've done in helping many of us fight for better policies. And yeah, be well. Thank you so much. Being able to tell the story of Paid Leave in California is so critical for not only our own program improvement, but also for advocacy at the federal level as we try to pass a national Paid Leave program. And without data, that story could not be told. So big, big thanks to our researcher panelists for joining us today. It is now my pleasure to introduce Amber Bauer, Executive Director of the United Food and Commercial Workers Western States Council for brief remarks. The Western States Council is composed of 200,000 UFCW members who work in grocery and retail in the States of California, Arizona and Nevada, standing together to improve the lives of workers, families and communities. It is also part of the 1.2 million member strong UFCW international union. Amber has served as Executive Director of UFCW Western States since 2019, and prior to that with the Council's political director. She leads UFCW's political and legislative efforts in Western States and has spent her career in and around California politics and building the strength of organized labor. Welcome Amber. Thank you so much. What a beautiful moment to come together and celebrate a piece of landmark legislation that has changed people's lives and transformed our communities. I love hearing from all the leaders gathered here in California and across the country about the important role of Paid Family Leave policies. We know these policies are the first step towards ensuring workers don't have to choose between taking care of their families and putting food on the table. I represent 200,000 workers in California, Arizona and Nevada, throughout the food sector and pharmacy, farm workers, meat packing plants and many other sectors. The very workers who were the catalyst behind implementing the Paid Family Leave program in California. Before September 23, 2002, Paid Leave was not guaranteed in any state. That means workers routinely had to go to work instead of taking time off to recover from birth, bond with a new baby, or to care for a seriously ill family member. To make ends meet, women in particular were forced to go back to work much too soon. When they weren't fully healed from giving birth, parents lost those critical few months to bond with their baby. We all had to agonize over family members who were critically ill while we were at work, distracted and scared. 20 years ago, workers pushed back on this reality and demanded California become the first state in the nation to provide Paid Family Leave to working families. Giving hardworking parents an opportunity to care for themselves and their families without worrying how to feed that new family. It's always been workers who have led the way because no one knows better than how important Paid Family Leave is essential to cutting poverty. It's our workers and our members who know that getting up early and working late to put food on their own table and they understand that struggle. We must protect these workers and their own families, honoring their sacrifice that keeps our economy running. 20 years later, it's clear that we must do much more to make Paid Family Leave accessible. I was fortunate to have this program in place when I had my own two children. It was a privilege that I could financially make the wage replacement work in order to stay home, recover from childbirth, and bond with my babies. I also know exactly how it feels to wish for a C-section, so you have a few extra weeks to stay home with your baby. I've been in work meetings when the day care texts you because you're infant is inconsolable and won't take a volatile. I know how it feels to see your baby wave goodbye for the first time as you hide the tears on your way to work. I combine my sick leave and my vacation time with Paid Family Leave to stay home for longer than most moms get, but it still wasn't enough. California is lucky to have some time workers can use to take care of their families, but other states aren't as fortunate. Paid Family Leave isn't just a women's issue. Increasing access to Paid Family Leave has the potential to transform our communities and our economy. We must view this critical leave as a human right. We must create a culture where parents are encouraged to take leave, and we must continue to fight for contracts that prioritize Paid Leave for all workers. The push for Paid Leave must be a movement that happens in every facet of our lives, our workplaces, our grocery stores, the halls of our capital. California can once again lead the country if we work together to make the Paid Family Leave program truly equitable and accessible to all. Let us all be a part of the movement, expanding leave for all families and to dream about what is possible. Thank you. Thank you, Amber. That was beautiful. The perspective and voice of your members is invaluable to these conversations, so we appreciate you being here. Our third and final panel, Paid Leave in Practice for Workers, Families and Businesses, will be moderated by Sharon Terman, Director of the Work and Family Program and Senior Staff Attorney at Legal Aid at Work, a nonprofit legal services organization that has been assisting low-income working families for more than 100 years. Sharon is an expert on family and medical leave policies and has played a key role in crafting several landmark laws improving California's work-family policies. Today we have heard from lawmakers about the why behind their tireless support of Paid Leave and from our researchers about the data that reinforces the support. We are now going to turn our attention to where the rubber meets the road, the real-life implications of California's Paid Leave program on workers, on families, on businesses, on communities. This panel will center us in the experiences of those on the ground allowing us to reflect on what has been made possible in these past 20 years and where we can and must do better. Take it away, Sharon. Thank you, Alex. At Legal Aid at Work, we hear firsthand how vital Paid Leave is for working families because we hear from over 1,000 Californians every year on our work and family helpline who need leave to care for themselves or their loved ones. Their stories have inspired us to push for equitable, accessible Paid Leave, especially for lower-paid and marginalized workers. Our clients' experiences are not unique. Every one of us, at some point in our lives, will either need care or need to provide care to someone we love. Caring for each other is part of being human and no one should have to risk their economic stability to welcome a new child or be with an ailing family member. In this panel, we will hear from workers, advocates, and businesses who will share their perspectives about how important Paid Family Leave is in practice and about the work we still have to do to ensure that all families can benefit. We're honored to have five outstanding panelists with us today. Jerry Sandoval Neri is a proud member of Parent Voices, a parent-led grassroots organizing effort fighting to make quality childcare accessible and affordable for all families. Jerry's also a proud member of the California Work and Family Coalition, and his experiences with Paid Leave as a new dad inspired him to become a Paid Leave advocate. Mary Ignatius is the statewide organizer of Parent Voices. She also is a mom who benefited from Paid Family Leave twice after giving birth to her two sons. She's grateful to the many organizations who bought to pass it and inspired by the parent leaders who continue to fight for its improvements. Epidona Benton is the president of the Association of California Caregiver Resource Centers. She has worked in the field of aging for over 30 years, and her volunteer experience with the Gray Panthers in high school inspired her career as an advocate for improving how we all view the natural process of aging. Kirk Bartam is a New York native and co-owner, co-founder and general manager of a slice of New York pizza shop in Santa Clara and Sunnyvale. In 2017, Kirk turned both shops into the South Bay's first retail employee owned worker cooperative. Kirk is a small business majority network member and spends much of his time educating local state and federal officials. And finally, Jenna Johnson is the president of Patagonia's apparel and equipment business working to advance Patagonia's mission to save our home planet by bringing environmental stewardship to the company's technical innovation. She has an executive MBA from the University of Washington and her roles as a rock climber, wife and mother of two keep her grounded living simply and optimistic for a more environmentally just future. Jerry, I'm going to start with you. Can you share a bit about your experience with paid leave and how it impacted you and your family? And also, why did it lead you to advocate for improvements to the program? Thank you very much, Sharon. And first of all, thanks everybody here for allowing me to speak a little about my experience. Yes, I am a member of Parent Voices as well as California Work and Coalition. But most importantly, I am a proud parent. And when my child was born, I went through that paid leave experience where at first of all, I had no idea I could take it as a male parent. I always understood it was a benefit for the mother, which in my head, it was understandable. But when somebody told me that I had that right as well because I was paying taxes, then I tried and attempted to take paid leave. So I ended up going through it. But when I first got my first paycheck, I realized that it wasn't enough. I only got 60% of my paid. And I was already struggling with 100% of my paid as it was. So you can understand that if I only got 60%, it was going to be a really, really hardship on my experience with it. And I was heartbroken because I had to return back to work, especially because I was very excited to when I got to meet my newborn and I had to leave her home. Didn't get a chance to take the full paid leave because obviously reasons that I just mentioned. So it was really a struggle at that point for me. I do believe that we need to extend it for sure just because I'm not the only one. I feel like I had it very, very easy but I believe there are people out there who are struggling way, way more than I do. So I thought that I had it made as a male parent to go into work and working for my family. And then realizing that I was not gonna make it with 60%, it was crazy. So I became an advocate for obvious reasons, going through it, then experiencing the bads of it. And I realized that I had the opportunity to do something about it when I joined Parent Voices. Then after that I joined California Working Family Coalition. And you know what? It was an honor being or has been an honor going through this experience with California Working Family Coalition because of my situation. I'm not here to speak about just myself but I speak for the community out there. The people that can take advantage of this are those who make money to save money. And the people who struggle like me have no choice but to stay working in. And I think that we all have to take advantage of this benefit at one point or another because we need to be there for our family. Thank you so much, Jerry, for sharing your story and also for translating your experience into advocacy for other families. Mary, I'm going to go to you next. I know you advocate for families in your professional life but you also took paid family leave after both your children were broke or were born. So can you share about your experience and what it meant for you and your family that you were able to take paid family leave? Yeah, thank you. I first just need to thank Patty Siegel, the former executive director of the California Child Care Resource Referral Network and Kim Krukel with the Child Care Law Center and our Parent Voices members, the child care advocates who have contributed to this movement that allowed me to then be able to take paid family leave. I was pregnant with my second child and found out that he would be born with a condition called club feet that left untreated. He wouldn't be able to walk. And the doctors told me that the sooner we started treatment after he was born, the better. And so from the time he was 10 days old till the time he was eight weeks old, he wore these little casts and we would go into the doctor's office. They would fix his little feet, put the cast on a week later, cut it off, mess with his feet, put the cast back on and on and on for eight weeks until eventually he would wear braces. Today he's nine years old, his feet are perfect. He is a fearless soccer player and he's just wonderful. And I really credit the paid family leave program because when his treatment was the most critical was when I was using paid family leave. I could focus 100% on what he needed and what I needed because I was freaking out. I was worried. I was nervous. I didn't have to worry about where my bills were gonna get paid.  And that was a privilege for me. But like Jerry and other parents that is not their privilege and they deserve access to this program. And we have other parents like Maria who would tell us that she was so happy she gave birth on Friday so that she could go back to work on Monday or Jasmine who was so happy she gave birth at night so that the next day she could finish her college final. And so for too many families in parent voices accessing a program they pay into is still so far removed from what they think is possible. And so that's why we're part of the coalition. We fight for those moms. We celebrate paid family but we celebrate it by working harder to make it accessible to all. So, and we need the governor to sign SB 951. Thank you, Mary. That was beautifully said. Donna, moving to you next. You are an expert in family caregiving for dementia and older adults. And I know we've talked about how many people think of baby bonding when they think of paid family leave but can you share why paid family leave is so important for unpaid family caregivers especially for older adults? Absolutely. And again, I wanna thank you for allowing me to be on this panel. One of the things that we've noticed in California we have about 5 million unpaid family caregivers caring for somebody with some type of cognitive impairment. And during that time about 40% are working but when they're working they are trying to balance that with caregiving at home which is usually like another 20 hours a week. And for our clients when we're able to talk to them about the ability to take paid family leave sometimes they need this so that they can set up care for the person they're caring for so they can get safely back to work. Sometimes they need it so that intermittently they can go and get to the doctor's appointment so that they can be that advocate for that older adult while they're there. We find that over time the family structure has changed so much and more people have less family members to help care for an older adult. So when they're working they don't have somebody to turn to and say hey can you come and take care of mom who may have Alzheimer's and isn't safe and so you can't just leave every day at home and you may not have an alternative person. We also found that because of the not surprisingly a lot of our caregivers are women and women of color and because of the kind of socio-political roots that devalues the contribution of family caregivers we've also found that they're less likely to stay in the job market. If when in their 40s or 50s they become family caregivers and they're caring for maybe a child at home. So them leaving the job market makes it harder because these are chronic conditions. It goes on for eight years on average and if they try to go back into the job labor market they're not able to get back into the labor market. So now you've impacted not only the generation now but future generations which can then lead to a cycle of poverty for these family caregivers. But if they were able to take it leave during that time they're able to stay in the job market. They're able to continue to contribute and not have to leave because they have to care for somebody that they love who took care of them and we wanna give back. And that's a value that so many of us share. So we want that financial health across generations. And I think this is why we keep struggling and fighting to improve PFL in California. And for our population people forget one out of every four families will be impacted by this at some point. Thank you so much Donna for highlighting the importance of paid leave across the lifespan. I am now excited to move to two amazing business representatives. And I wanna say I know that Senator Jackson had spoken earlier about how historically there have been some parts of the business community who have been in opposition to these programs but I wanna say that we have immense gratitude for businesses like a slice of New York, like Patagonia, like the Bay Area Councils folks and so many others who really break the mold and support their workforce and understand the benefits of these programs for both workers and employers. So I'm going to you next Kirk. I wanna ask you as a small business owner how do you see paid family leave supporting businesses like yours? Kirk, we can't hear you. Might be muted. No, we're still not hearing you. So- How was that? Better? Okay, not sure what happened. Apologize, it was working before. Okay, well, I started with, I just wanted to thank you for letting me speak today and mentioned our pizza shops just celebrated our 16 year anniversary on Monday and we became a worker cooperative just over five years ago. As a general manager and the only management in our business I see my duties being twofold. First, successful shop operations, escalation and solvency and second to maximize income for our team. As a co-op, our board immediately formed two committees culture and accountability also known as the culture club and the finance and employee benefits committee. One of the first policies the finance and employee benefits committee passed was establishing a PTO policy which we never had before. We formalized our employee wellness policy that retains and fully covers the cost of chiropractic massage services established an employee loan policy, a holiday policy and recently a 401K plan. A few years ago, one of our members became pregnant actually his wife became pregnant and as a board member he asked us to consider a family benefit. While not many of our members are new family focused we felt it was part of our culture to support and foster our team's personal needs and growth. We looked at the state's program and saw it was a six week benefit that covered 60% of the employee's salary. So we created our own paid family leave policy that allows our members to take the six weeks per the state's program and our co-op would cover the 40% difference in salary even retroactively for members that had babies before this policy was adopted. This year, when another baby came along we reviewed our update our policy to cover the full eight weeks. The paid family leave act is truly something to be celebrated as small businesses like ours do not have the resources or scale to fully care for our team. I can say with absolute certainty that we need better access to healthcare and services like this in the year of the head. And I'm honored to be part of this 20 year celebration of the paid family leave act. Thank you so much, Kirk. And thank you for all you do for your employees and for the community. Finally, Jenna, in addition to being an extraordinary leader on the environment as reflected by your founder's ground breaking announcement last week that he's donating the entire company to fight climate change. Patagonia also has been a leader in family supportive workplace policies from paid leave to onsite childcare. Can you share your perspective on why and how California's paid family leave program benefits employers? And what has your experience been with providing paid leave to your workforce? Yeah, thank you so much. Really nice to be here with all of you who are on the panel today. You know, I really feel like part of paid leave is just an ethical and a moral obligation that we really need to take seriously. But I will also speak on behalf of the fact that it is also a really important business imperative in this very tight labor market that's out there at the moment. And the fact that all of us who are in any business are competing in a business to stay alive. You want the best people in your company working for you. And today what that means is taking care of respecting, showing dignity to your workers. And so these support systems become absolutely fundamental to how you can run a successful business. And we have certainly proved that over time. I'll say Sharon, I'm really grateful for you for kind of the kind words that you said about those of us who have been in this for a while and have provided really strong support systems for our workers. And yet I often say that it pains me to hear when people say that because I truly don't want that to be a competitive advantage of Patagonia, I want that not for us to be an exception or unusual or exceptional, but we should be the norm. What we're providing to our workers is truly just a sense of dignity and respect and honor for our workers and the fact that they have lives and the ability to create really powerful support systems that honor that is so important. And when I speak to kind of the business side of it, what we've found is that we can build a more equitable and a more productive workforce by putting these support systems in place. It allows us to attract really important best in class talent. Like I mentioned a minute ago, it allows us to retain that talent in a really important way.  And what that means is that what we've found is that when our women go out on maternity leave, all of them come back to work for us post maternity leave, which then means we now have a workforce that is at least 50% women and including 50% women in upper management roles. And that is directly linked to the fact that we have been very intentional about putting these support systems in place for our working families. And that will continue to be an important part of what we do. But what I really continue to advocate on behalf of is that again, I don't want this to be a competitive advantage and California has done such a great job at being a leader in this. Still a lot more work to be done, Mary. I join you in pushing everyone who's listening to call the governor's office and get SB 951 moved through and off of his desk and approved. And then, then we can go on to the conversation about the fact that California should not be unusual in the same way that Patagonia should not be unusual. And we really need to keep fighting for this at a national level, so that all of our workers across this country can have that dignity and that respect. I travel globally often and it is embarrassing, I will say, to travel around the world and know what we're failing on for our people in this country. Thank you so much, Jenna, for your inspiring words and for the work you do to protect our planet and working families. I want to ask one more question of each of you and we have time if we keep our answers short. So I'd like to just go in the order that we started and the question is, what is one thing you wish policymakers understood about paid leave? So starting with you, Jerry. Hi, thank you. So my answer to that would be, I wish they understood the struggle that all the people have. I wish they would have gone through it so that they could understand what we are going through and what we are asking for. We're not just asking for this for just to ask for it, like where any kid will ask for a toy, right? But I wish they understood the struggle. That's my answer to that. Thank you, Mary. Well, Jerry, you're just gonna have to run for office. So more people understand that struggle. I just, for me, it's that, my story is about my son having club fee as if that's like a justification as to why I deserve to be at home with him. I think for any of us, we are not robots. We are human beings and we have lives outside of work and we have people who need us outside of work. And whether it's for a newborn adopted child or an elderly family member, we should have the right to care for them when they are in their most vulnerable times. And I just feel like there should be no justification. It should be a right. It's about our humanity. It's about our dignity. So beautiful. Thank you, Donna. I would say that caring is everyone's business. It is something that is good for business. It's good for our economy. And I think someone said that somebody's much smarter than me said that we're judged by how we treat the youth and our elderly. And so this is what we, we don't wanna be judged on not allowing people to provide care when and having to make a choice between work and family or friends. Absolutely, yeah, chosen family. Totally chosen family. Anything we can do that enables small businesses to care for their team is critical. There are many daily struggles, especially in businesses like ours that are physically demanding. Having programs like paid family leave to provide salary replacement to employees that are starting a family or caring for existing family members is a huge benefit and one we could not do on our own. I fully support legislation and programs that provide essential coverages to lost income, including current bills like SB 951 that would grow salary coverage to 90%. My key message for policymakers is this, taking time to build a successful family without worrying about losing hours in income at work, a high risk in one's ability to pay for the cost of the very family they are building is critical for the sanity of all workers in every small business. And I hope you will continue to fund, embrace and expand this program. I love that. And finally, Jenna. Yeah, I agree with all of my co-panelists. And I think I would just compliment it from a business point of view and saying that we have proven and I believe very strongly that these programs pay for themselves. So a lot of the concern is around the cost of them, but we've spoken to just a few of the many elements in which, in ways that we actually get back what we put into these types of programs and spades. And so when we look around the world, many others have led much farther than we have in proving that that's true. And so we have lots of examples that we can learn from in order to do this in a smart and responsible way. Thank you to Jerry, Mary, Donna, Kirk and Jenna for sharing your insights and for being an inspiration to all of us in the work that you do. And on behalf of the co-host of today's event, I wanna thank all of our distinguished speakers and paid leave champions for being a part of this celebration. We've heard today about the wide ranging benefits of paid leave for workers and employers and about the tireless work by legislative leaders and advocates over the past two decades to make California's paid leave program more inclusive and responsive to the needs of all families, especially low paid workers, black and brown, immigrant and LGBTQ plus communities. Because of this advocacy, millions of Californians have been able to take leave to welcome a new child or tend to ill family members without losing their full pay. Paid leave has improved the health of our families, businesses and communities. I also wanna underscore that our work here isn't done. Leave to late at work, the California work and family coalition and so many of the folks here today are hard at work to make sure Californians know about and can use the benefits they're entitled to. We're also hard at work to strengthen the program so that more people have access to paid leave, including through improvements like Senator Dorazzo's SB951, which is currently sitting on Governor Newsom's desk. We won't stop until all people can be there for their loved ones during life's most meaningful moments without having to risk their livelihood. Thank you for being with us today and we invite you to join us as we continue to advocate for better protections both in California and nationally. We look forward to celebrating even more progress in the years to come in achieving equitable paid leave for all.