Ted Cruz Thinks Employers Should Be Allowed To Deny Their Employees Paid Family Leave
Republican presidential candidate and current Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) was asked by a member of the work/family policy organization Make It Work about paid family leave at the Iowa State Fair. In response, he said that while he values paid leave, he doesn’t support any requirement that companies actually offer it to workers.
“I think maternity leave and paternity leave are wonderful things. I support them personally,” he said in remarks released in video on Friday. “But I don’t think the federal government should be in the business of mandating them.”
Yet without a mandate, more than 70 percent of employers offer no paid maternity leave and more than 80 percent don’t offer paid paternity leave. That leaves 88 percent of the workforce without paid family leave if they have a new child.
Some companies have recently made news for offering generous paid leave benefits, like the year of unlimited leave introduced at Netflix. Other tech companies have beefed up their leave policies. But those benefits mostly flow to high-income, white-collar workers. The less someone makes, the less likely they are to get paid family leave from work. Just 5 percent of the lowest-paid workers get paid maternity or paternity leave, while 21 percent of the highest paid can count on it.
Read more: http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/09/02/3697995/ted-cruz-family-leave/
[font color=330088]Ted Cruz--moving us forward to the 18th century![/font] 
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