Los Angeles City Council Considering Paid Parental Leave Study

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — A proposal that would provide city employees who are new parents with four weeks of paid bonding time could be the next hot-button social issue before the Los Angeles City Council.

Councilman Paul Krekorian, along with Councilwoman Nury Martinez, is pushing for the new city worker benefit, saying he is "hopeful that this effort will lead Los Angeles to join the ranks of other U.S. cities and the military by offering competitive, family-friendly benefits for our workers."

"It is time for L.A., and the United States as a whole, to catch up with the rest of the world," he said.

Employers in European countries like France, the United Kingdom, Germany and Spain, as well as other major nations like China, Mexico and Russia, already provide some form of paid parental leave, according to Krekorian.

In the United States, private employers like Wal-Mart, Ernst & Young, Bank of America and many tech companies have also started to offer "some measure of paid parental leave," he said. Other municipal employers such as Seattle, San Francisco and Chicago are also starting to look into paid parental time off, he said.

Krekorian and Martinez put in the initial request for the study last September. If the motion is approved by the full City Council, the City Administrative Officer and the Chief Legislative Analyst would report back on the "feasibility and budgetary impact" of offering four weeks of paid parental time to new parents.

City employees currently have four months of unpaid leave to bond with their children. In order to get paid during that time, some employees use a mixture of accrued paid vacation and sick leave hours, according to city officials.

Tuesday's City Council meeting was adjourned due to a lack of quorum, with only seven of the 15 members showing up for roll call.

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