Paid parenting leave: A union attraction for a new generation

Before Labor Day recedes further into 2016's rearview mirror, here's a tip of my hat to a labor union. Not a union of yore, the sort celebrated every Labor Day with televised documentaries featuring grainy black-and-white footage of placard-carrying workers striking to win a 40-hour week. I'm here to report the work of a here-and-now union that has just demonstrated its relevance to the millennial generation.

Thanks to the good work of the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees (MAPE), all unionized state employees appear to be on the verge of acquiring a new benefit — six weeks of paid leave for both mothers and fathers upon the birth or adoption of a child.

The terms are spelled out in a newly negotiated mid-contract memorandum of understanding between state unions and the executive branch. If the bipartisan House-Senate joint Subcommittee on Employee Relations concurs — or if it fails to act, or casts a tie vote (a distinct possibility, since it's composed of five DFLers and five Republicans) — the new benefit will become available on an interim basis, likely in November.

The 2017 Legislature must approve for it to stick for good. And well legislators should. They should be delighted that this new benefit is the handiwork of labor and management — and not their own.

In recent years, legislators and local government officials have seen firsthand a phenomenon I consider a consequence of the shrinkage in the unionized share of Minnesota's workforce: In the absence of widespread collective bargaining, state and local governments face increasing demands to serve as the arbiters of workers' desires for and employers' resistance to better pay and benefits. Elected officials are called upon to decide questions once deemed the purview of management and labor at collective-bargaining tables — and to do so not for one workplace or industry, but for entire cities or the whole state.

Only last week, the St. Paul City Council approved a requirement that all employers in the city provide their employees with paid sick and safe leave. That move went a step further than the Minneapolis City Council did in May; its sick leave rule exempted employers of five or fewer workers. The Duluth City Council is under growing pressure to follow suit.

In the two big cities, business objections about municipal overreach and one-size-fits-all inflexibility went unheeded. But the businesses aren't toothless at the Legislature. One of the big tussles in the 2017 session is sure to be over business demands that the Minneapolis and St. Paul sick leave rules be "pre-empted" by the state. Legislators will be asked to take sides with either business or labor, making plenty of them uncomfortable.

At some point soon — if not already — I hope it dawns on employers that a unionized workforce isn't such a bad thing. Employee benefits tailored to particular circumstances, with flexibility that suits both workers and employers, are more likely to be achieved at the bargaining table than at City Hall or the State Capitol.

Of course, that presumes that unions are willing to put their collective energies behind the adaptation of workplace benefits to modern life. That has not always been true — and that brings me back to MAPE.

Paid parenting leave was on the agenda of the burgeoning women's movement 40 years ago. It found its way into a few union contracts and into the employee benefit policies of enlightened corporations then. But the push for parenting leave in Minnesota and nationally stalled as the baby boom generation moved out of its childbearing years.

Maybe coincidentally — or maybe not — the share of Minnesota workers who hold union cards has dropped. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics pegged the unionized share of the Minnesota workforce in 2015 at 14.2 percent, down from 22 percent in 1992.

When Johanna Schussler, a business analyst at the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, gave birth to her son five years ago, she used some accumulated sick leave and vacation time to heal and care for her baby. She had opted for short-term disability insurance coverage (not all state employees do), giving her several weeks of partial wage replacement. She and her husband decided they could afford three weeks of unpaid leave. As of 2014, state law requires larger employers to allow for up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to new parents.

It added up to 12 weeks off. Schussler felt fortunate, knowing that many other new parents in Minnesota have far less time with their newborns. But she also felt that new parents and their children are ill-served without paid parenting leaves.

"Parents should go back to work when they are ready, not when they run out of money," she said. "This is the issue that brought me into the union."

Schussler found a number of like-minded leaders in MAPE, among them Stephanie Meyer, an epidemiologist with the state Department of Health. MAPE led a push to put paid parenting leave on the negotiating table in the summer of 2015, for possible inclusion in the next two-year contract. The leave proposal fell off the table before a final agreement was reached. But MAPE had succeeded in getting the attention of Gov. Mark Dayton. He appointed a labor/management working group to consider the issue.

"It became apparent immediately that we were on the same page," Meyer said. "We both wanted to do this. It helps the state retain employees. State government is facing huge retirement numbers right now, and the new generation of workers is more mobile and looking for best benefits." Women of childbearing age are leaving state employment at twice the rate of other state workers, she noted.

Dayton asked the 2016 Legislature to appropriate $6 million over three years for paid parental leaves for all state employees. The Legislature did not act. But the Dayton administration decided to enter into a memorandum of understanding with state employee unions that would at least initially direct state agencies to reallocate existing funds to cover the cost of replacing workers on parenting leave. That memorandum now seems likely to do the job.

"To me, this is what unions are for — to make everyone's lives better," Meyer said. The parenting leave push is helping her union make that point to a new generation.

Lori Sturdevant, an editorial writer and columnist, is at lsturdevant@startribune.com.