The Wall Street Journal-20080216-Another View of the Family And Medical Leave Act

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Another View of the Family And Medical Leave Act

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Yes, it's easy to make family leave look like an economic liability -- just cherry-pick a few statistics, pull together some small studies of unrepresentative businesses, and rely on the Employment Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank that's now defunct ("Fixing Family Leave," Review & Outlook, Feb. 5).

Your editorial on the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) conveniently didn't mention the last truly comprehensive study on family leave, one conducted by the Department of Labor in 2000, which proved that the FMLA had a neutral or positive effect on profits for 90% of employers.

Of course family leave, like any other program, carries costs; but those costs are far outweighed by the ability it gives us to care for ourselves and our loved ones.

The fact is that since the FMLA became law 15 years ago, more than 50 million Americans have benefited from its protections in times of great need, without harming their employers.

If the FMLA were as crippling to businesses as you claim, corporations like Phoenix Companies and many others wouldn't offer more time off than required -- and they certainly wouldn't pay for part of it, as they do.

Only pick the facts you like, and it's easy to characterize many of those who take family leave as "slackers gaming the system." But tell that to Eva Bunnell, whose husband was fired for requesting leave while her newborn daughter fought for her life in the ICU. Before the FMLA, stories like hers were a fact of American working life.

And they will be again, if the Secretary of Labor's new regulations succeed in putting more bureaucratic roadblocks in the way of those seeking family leave.

Sen. Christopher J. Dodd

(D., Conn)

East Haddam, Conn.