New York, NY – Following a roundtable with employees at Spotify’s New York City headquarters, U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand today announced that Spotify has endorsed the Family and Medical Insurance Leave (FAMILY) Act. Spotify, a music subscription service with over 100 million active users, is the latest in a growing list of businesses to endorse the bill and implement a companywide paid parental leave policy of its own. Senator Gillibrand’s FAMILY Act would create a gender and age neutral national paid family and medical leave insurance program to provide eligible employees with up to 12 weeks of paid leave for a personal or family member’s medical emergency. A national paid family and medical leave program could add approximately $20 billion to the pockets of American families each year, and save workers hundreds of thousands of dollars in wages and retirement.
“Spotify’s endorsement of the FAMILY Act is the latest example of a business recognizing that paid leave is a smart and pragmatic workplace policy,” said U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. “Our current system is not working — we are the only industrialized country in the world that doesn’t guarantee its workers some form of paid leave. While I fight to pass the FAMILY Act in the Senate, I hope more companies will follow Spotify’s lead in the meantime and implement paid leave policies of their own. I look forward to working with Spotify to help pass this bill and give every American worker access to paid family and medical leave.”
Business leaders and hundreds of business school faculty across the United States support the FAMILY Act, and businesses in states that have already implemented paid family leave policies report positive results. In these states, businesses’ bottom lines have benefited by improved worker retention, reduced benefit costs, increased worker productivity and morale, improved employee loyalty and less turnover. In California, 91 percent of employers surveyed said paid leave had a “positive effect” on profitability.
Over 85 percent of workers do not have access to paid family leave. The consequences of workers withdrawing from the workforce for family and medical reasons are less income in the short run, lower chances to achieve raises and promotions, a greater reliance on social welfare programs, a reduction in social security benefits, and a lower accumulation of lifetime earnings.