Podcast

In this episode of the Gordon Feinblatt podcast, hosts Alex Montanio and Saad Malik discuss the evolving landscape of parental leave legislation, particularly focusing on Maryland's recent paid parental leave law. They explore the implications of this law for employers and employees, the importance of flexibility in parental leave policies, and the business case for investing in such benefits to retain talent. The conversation highlights the challenges faced by working parents and the need for supportive workplace environments that recognize the value of caregiving.

This episode of the Gordon Feinblatt Podcast, along with all of our previous episodes, can be listened to on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and iHeart Radio.

Episode Transcript: 

Alex Montanio (Alex): Hi everyone. Thanks so much for tuning into the Gordon Feinblatt podcast. My name is Alex Montanio. I am an attorney in the employment and healthcare groups at Gordon Feinblatt. I'm also the director of corporate social responsibility as will become relevant later in this podcast. I'm also the parent of two little kids and I'm joined today by my colleague, Saad. 

Saad Malik (Saad): Hi everyone. My name Saad Malik. I'm an attorney in the real estate group. I'm also the chair of the firm's DEI committee and a parent of one. 

Alex: So today in our podcast, we're going to talk about an issue that blends legal practice and diversity, equity, and inclusion policies. When we think about our firm's corporate social responsibility program, we're always blending the current state of legal affairs into the ways that we think about policy and supporting our own personnel and how we advise other companies to support their personnel. So that's what's kind of the background is for our conversation today. 

Saad: So Alex, can you talk a little bit about the current legal requirements around parental leave?

Alex: Right. Whenever I think about a policy issue in the diversity, equity, inclusion space, the first step is to see what is the current legal framework. So the big news in Maryland right now is that the General Assembly, our legislative body, passed a paid parental leave law back in 2022. This is a big deal. ⁓ Nine states to date have paid parental policies, but most of the country, if you take ⁓ state parental leave, it's unpaid. So this was a really big moment in our state's evolution.

But most recently in this recent general assembly that just wrapped up a couple of weeks ago, they passed a law and the big kind of headline from that is that they've delayed implementation of the paid parental leave law. Before we get into what that means for companies like ours and others, let's step back and get a little more context about the state of parental leave. This is an issue that's governed by both federal and state legal considerations. So on the federal level, there are several applicable laws all relating to this idea of unpaid leave. Where really what you're getting is protection that your employer won't fire you for taking time to care for a new baby or a new child in your family. And so the laws that come to mind there are Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, Family and Medical Leave Act, and in some cases the American with Disabilities Act, and then more recently the PUMP Act, which is about pumping and breastfeeding in the workplace. But these are all focused on, again, kind of protecting you from adverse employment action related to caring for these young children, but they're all unpaid. 

We get to the state level when it gets a little bit more, there's more kind of range there and what we can see. 

Saad: So talk to us a little bit about that. What are we seeing at the state level? 

Alex: Right. So, what Maryland had prior to this 2022 law called the Time to Care Act is we have the Maryland Civil Rights Act that largely mirrors our federal counterpart. And then we had the Maryland Healthy Working Families Act, which is what we think of as sick and safe leave. So, there is again this ability to take unpaid leave to care for a newborn baby. ⁓ But for many workers in Maryland and throughout the country, parents don't necessarily have the savings to be able to leave their workplace for an extended period of time and not have degenerating income. So, the result is that a lot of parents when they have a baby don't take very much time away from work, even if it would be based on data and research better for the baby and the family for them to have that time.

So, what Maryland has is this unpaid protection so you can do it. But what data tells us is that a lot of parents aren't actually able to take advantage of that. There's also some county level laws protecting people from discrimination when they're pregnant or recently had a child, which vary by jurisdiction within Maryland. But really this big-ticket item here is our Time to Care Act. What that law will do is provide paid caregiver leave. I'm using the word caregiver there very intentionally. We're talking largely about parents of young children. The Time to Care Act is actually about caregivers generally. So, if you have to take care of a sick family member, that will also be covered. The way that that Time to Care Act will be structured is it's financed by contributions both from the employee side. So, it'd be something taken out of our paychecks and also an employer contribution. 

Saad: So, no different than regular withholdings from your pay.

Alex: Right, exactly. The idea was not to place the burden on any one group, whether it was employers, employees. That's exactly right. This was passed. It's now been delayed several times. Prior to this current session of General Assembly, we expected payroll contributions for this new law to start this July. But over the course of the General Assembly, the Department of Labor, who's in charge of implementing this program, said that they just need more time and that the current economic conditions in our state make it that this is the wrong time to start implementing this leave. So, the status today is that the General Assembly passed this law saying that payroll contributions won't start until January of 2027 and funds won't be available for families to use until January of 2028. 

Saad: So, with the state of the current economy, do you expect that we could see another postponement here? 

Alex: Yeah, it's hard to say, right? This is clearly a very contentious issue. I think the advocates who've been seeking paid family leave in Maryland have been working on this for many, many, many years and are clearly disappointed with the delay. From an implementation standpoint, we don't even have the regulations yet for this program to know kind of exactly how to advise employers to go about it. So, I think we clearly needed more time to get all of essentially the ducks in a row here. But you know, I think everybody in Maryland, the governor, is very supportive of this. I think lots of people want to see families have more support. So, I think it's certainly the hope, but we'll have to continue to monitor the actual timing of the implementation. 

Saad: Sure. So, let's talk about how it's impacting us here at Gordon Feinblatt and why this policy is so important to us. It’s an important recruitment tool, right? We're living in a time where childcare is incredibly expensive. As someone who has a two-year-old and I sometimes go and I look to see what kind of daycare I can get my kid into,  the sticker shock is real. And a lot of parents need time to figure out what they're going to be doing for their kids. So it's a critical tool for both recruitment and retention. We have folks who are here who have different timelines for what they're going to be doing as far as family planning and that sort of flexibility is important. But Alex, can you talk about what that flexibility looks like? So, what do we offer here at firm?

Alex: Yeah, so we designed a policy that we thought could meet a broad range of needs. So, what we decided was best for our firm. So first we looked at the law and said, the law doesn't have anything paid, but we can still choose to offer paid leave because we think it's the right thing to do. And that's where we had been doing that for many, years. But we said, let's really look at what we think our employees need. And the data on families in Maryland, we have lot of families that have two parents who are working. So, it's not necessarily that one person can stay home in a way that maybe prior generations could experience. We also see data about particularly millennial parents, where dads are really engaged. Shout out to the engaged dads. Right before this podcast started, we were talking about how Saad spent Saturday at the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra with his child at a performance there for little kids. So, we have these parents who really want to have both of their parents be engaged. We also have lots of LGBTQ family members where you're thinking about maybe these traditional gender norms don't fit, right? So, what is that going to look like for them? So, where we landed, is we give 16 weeks of paid leave to any new parent, regardless of their gender. And we allow people to take those 16 weeks in a way that works best for them. So, what that looks like is we have some colleagues who have a baby. This also applies to adopting and fostering a new child in their family. So, a new addition to their family and they take 16 weeks straight out. You also have the option to take it in a different way, which I think both you and I kind of had different approaches to this. So, what did you do when your daughter was born? 

Saad: Yeah. So, for me, it's well, I guess for any new parent, it's a little interesting because you really don't know what you're doing, so when I joined the firm in August of 2022, my wife was pregnant at the time and we were still very much figuring out what we were doing with ourselves, much less what we were going to be doing raising a child. And it's funny, you go to a daycare, and you say, you know, I want to put my child on the list for the newborn stage and the wait list is a year. And how that math works out, I don't know, you know, what parent can give a year's notice to put their child on a list for daycare. So, I mean, that put us in a bind, right? And what was great is I was able to take leave and really use it flexibly… work things out with my wife so that when she was off originally, I took a couple of weeks, of course, when my daughter was born, but then I was right back at work. And we were able to stack it where she was able to take as much time as she needed to while I was back at work. And then as she had to start transitioning back, I started taking more time. And what was great was I had complete flexibility here. So, I would be working for a week and I would be gone for a week or I would be working for two weeks and then I would be gone for a month. And I was able to stretch it out and that allowed us to buy the time that we needed to, you know, whether it's a nanny, whether it's moving up on the wait list of a daycare, we were able to find something that worked for us, especially, you know, being in the thick of things, not getting much sleep, not really thinking rationally, you're just trying to survive. So having that time, that flexibility was so important. What about you, Alex? What was your experience like?

Alex: Yes, I've had two children. My son, Easton, is now four. So, with him, I took a chunk of time right when he was born in 2020. And then I was doing a part time schedule to stretch out that leave for as long as I could. With my daughter, Kinsey, who will be two this summer, I took again a chunk of time at the beginning, like seven weeks at the beginning. And then what I did from there is I said, I'm to work as many hours a week as I feel comfortable. And then the following week, I would just email my time to our benefits manager shout out, Alison block. She's great. And so, some weeks where I felt like I was really able, I was doing a little bit more and that allowed me to keep on top of projects that I felt really personally invested in and really wanted to make sure I saw across the finish line. But it also allowed me to save some time. So even when Kinsey started daycare, she was four or five months old at that point, I still had saved some maternity leave time which was such a, in retrospect, a really strong move because as you know, when your child starts any kind of care setting, they are perpetually sick. They're just perpetually sick. So she would be out of daycare, you know, with a cold or a bug. And I still was using leave time that I had to not really feel that same pressure of like, gosh, like how am going to balance like taking care of my now sick child and balancing my workload. And I think for me, I mean, I really use that whole year until you know, her first birthday to still be using leave in a way that really was customized and tailored to like what my workflow was. And I think that worked both for me personally as a parent, but also for my clients, right? That I was accessible through that period, but I was reaching out to them and connecting with them around kind of what my caregiving responsibilities were at that time. 

Saad: Yeah, to, mean, to your point, flexibility is key. So not only from the parenting perspective and that every household has their own way of doing things and their own way of parenting. As lawyers in particular, I mean, I have some clients, if they don't hear from me for 16 weeks, I don't know what's gonna happen. They're either gonna stop calling me afterwards or they're gonna think something's really wrong. So, it's different for everyone. And I think what's great about our policy is it recognizes that it should be different for everyone. And that was really helpful for me as a new parent navigating the room. 

Alex: Yeah, and I look at what the data tells us about this, right? Like, you're kind of shocked and probably, fairly to say, horror about like the wait list for daycare, right? There are shortages of placements available for really young children. That's a nationwide kind of challenge that everybody's facing. And so what you see in the data is this is the point where a lot of companies are losing really talented career professionals. They are finding that if they cannot find safe, affordable, accessible childcare, the alternative is they leave the workforce. Or they don't go after a promotion that they might have been going for otherwise. So, you're losing, you're really kind of breaking the talent pipeline at this really critical juncture when what we've seen both in data from national studies and our own experiences within the firm with a little support you can navigate this bridge, right? Like once you get through that first year, it doesn't necessarily get so easy, but you get used to it, right? And you've adjusted and you kind of fit your life around it. So, if you can get people through this bridge year, then you're retaining really excellent employees. 

Saad: Yeah. And I think having a policy is part of the step. It's probably most of the step there. A great thing that I thought that we had here was we had a community. You know, you and I are having this conversation now, but we've had it off the mic probably dozens of times. And I remember when I was first, you know, we were going to have our daughter, my wife and I really didn't know what we were doing. And we reached out to Alex and she connected me with folks at the firm who have gone through the exact same steps and having that community kind of in line with this policy really gives you that full comprehensive experience at work as far as having a supportive employer that's going to help navigate you through this process. 

Alex: Yeah, absolutely. I think again, I'm totally with you that I think policy is the baseline, but you have to do more than words on a paper to make people feel like that being a parent can be a real asset, right? I think there's a lot of skills I've learned as a parent that have improved my ability to provide legal services. But it's, you know, we have a very robust caregivers group and we're bringing in and tailoring a lot of programming to what we think people want and need to hear. We were just talking before we started recording this that I'm starting to think about what kindergarten will look like for my son. And the caregivers group had a kindergarten teacher come and talk about, what do you need to do to get your kid ready for kindergarten? And it was so refreshing to have both parents in the room who had already been through that, to hear from a teacher's perspective. It was actually the wife of one of our colleagues, was a kindergarten teacher. But kind of thinking on these wrap around programs where it's like, being a parent is absolutely now foundational to who I am. It's not just a professional, but as a person. And so, I feel like work has never asked me to try to choose, right? It's both. It's an and situation. 

Saad: I mean, being biased here, that's how it should be. It shouldn't be a, there shouldn't be a sacrifice necessarily here. It's possible to excel both ways. If folks are really being mindful about the policies that they're going to be putting in place, then, you know, I'm hoping that we serve as two examples of exactly that. 

Alex: Yeah, right. I mean, I think when you have any policy where you're talking about paid leave, like the counter point is everybody's, well, what about the costs? But again, when I think about helping clients design policy, I'm looking at what are the best practices in diversity and equity inclusion space. We've talked about kind of that inclusion aspect. We talk about the legal requirements. And then I always go to data, right? I just want to, I don't want to just be winging it, right? I want to know because people have studied these things, they've researched it and the data on these types of policies and activities is really clear. Companies are making a sound investment when they invest in retaining these types of employees. Replacing employees is very expensive. Recruitment is expensive. Onboarding is expensive, right? So it's like we have seen so many examples. I could have pulled in a number of colleagues to have this type of conversation where we've retained really great folks. And even on the back end where we've seen people switch schedules around or go from full-time to part-time temporarily, right? The firm has been able to accommodate any number of family situations, which has allowed us to retain such excellent talent. And that's gonna be a net win for the firm. So, I think that's kind of the takeaway. The law here gives you a baseline and companies should be thinking, okay, the Time to Care Act is going to be here at some point. And I should start thinking about how if I don't already have paid parental leave, what that's going to look like for our company. So now is the time to start having those conversations, get ahead of this, right? You don't have to wait for the implementation date. You can really start reaping benefits as a company by getting ahead of this and putting in a policy in place right now. 

Saad: And I think if folks want to learn a little bit more about what the firm's doing, use it as an example and try to implement a version of it, you should definitely reach out to Alex. She would be more than happy to help guide you guys through these problems. We don't have problems, opportunities. 

Alex: That's exactly right, opportunities. So, thank you so much for chatting about parental leave with me today. I'm excited to continue this conversation as part of our diversity, equity, and inclusion committee. And as you said, I am happy to talk to anybody out there that wants to think about what parental leave and supporting parents and ultimately caregivers more broadly might look like at their workplace. Our contact information will be in the show notes for all of our listeners. So, reach out if you have any questions.