Hila’s Story:
My name is Hila, I work for Metro in Solid Waste. I have been an employee here for two years, and I love my job and working for Metro.
My spouse and I have a two year old and we are expecting our second baby in June. My husband is a full time teacher so we both work away from home.
I took time off for the birth of my first child and had no Paid Family Leave benefit. Knowing that it would be a great financial stress on my family I tried my hardest to save all my sick days and vacation days to be used when I gave birth. It was stressful coming to work sick and being asked by my colleagues to leave because “that’s what sick time is for”. I don’t see it that way. In my reality, my sick time is divided amongst myself and my children and I will use it for their benefit every time. That means I come to work sick when pregnant, and it’s miserable for everyone. I took sixteen weeks off to care for my infant. Only five of those were paid because of the limited time I had worked there and because of the sacrifices I made throughout that year.
With the majority of my time not paid our family depleted our savings account and two years later we have not been able to replenish it. We use our credit cards to pay for groceries and amounted debt. I qualified for SNAP benefits. It’s still astonishing and humbling to me that we both worked full time in decent jobs and live a modest lifestyle, and yet still relied on welfare.
We prioritized being with our infant because it is what we value as a family but it was at the cost of our economic well being.
We feel lucky to have family close who are very helpful in sharing hand me downs: a car seat, clothes, and much need baby items as well as help watching our son, or we would be in further debt.
I am working towards a Paid Family Leave policy at Metro because it’s personal. Since we starting requesting Paid Family Leave a couple of my colleagues have given birth without the benefit of it being paid. I empathize with them and I am scared that I too will likely be faced with giving birth again without the protection of paid family leave.
I believe in this very important issue because babies need care and bonding time with their parents to develop into healthy happy kids, and ultimately into adults who will thrive.
I believe that if employers want to be competitive in the workplace they need to be innovative and should have policies that support hiring and retaining folks. I believe this is an equity issue because there are large disparities in access to paid leave across groups of people, with access being particularly low among low wage workers and those newer to the work force.
Sable’s Story:
My name is Sable, I live in North Portland with my husband and our twenty month old son. I work as a cashier at a locally owned grocery store, I’ve worked there for the last four years. My husband is a wildland firefighter, which takes him away from home months at a time.
When I became pregnant I was very clear that I wanted three months off to be with my newborn. As an African American woman I know the breast-feeding rate is lower for us than other women. I also know of the tremendous health benefits to breast feeding and I wanted them for my child.
While my husband is not a low wage worker, he only works a certain number of months a year, his salary has to stretch to the entire year. I was a full time student when I became pregnant. I had no access to paid family leave to take the three months I know my baby needed.
My only option was to sign up for a full load of classes and take out student loans to help us through the time I needed. As it turned out my baby had major breast-feeding challenges. He was born with tongue-tie, which, made breast-feeding very difficult. He also had a frenectomy and required craniosacral therapy to improve his latch. I worked closely with a lactation specialist for almost twelve weeks. Several of those weeks were spent on the couch solely nursing. I felt and feel proud that as an African American mother I was able to give my child access to health benefit such as fewer illnesses, long-term protection against chronic illness because I worked hard to ensure he could breastfeed.
The very financially painful side to incurring so many student loans, in addition to still being burdened with the debt, is that I could not attend classes and had to withdraw from my courses having used up the money to take those classes.
The lack of paid family leave has left my family in financial debt. If was able to have my baby and take the time to care for myself and meet our bonding and his medical needs, our family would be in a more secure place right now.