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In a speech to a joint session of Congress, President Biden unveiled the “The American Families Plan,” the third part of the president’s push to power a post-pandemic recovery. Along with the $1.9 trillion fiscal stimulus and a proposal for an infrastructure plan that would earmark $2.3 trillion to upgrade roads, bridges, railroads, and the country’s aging power grid, the American Families Plan seeks to fund a wide range of initiatives to address deep-lying problems on the job market that the pandemic exposed, and hopefully help the more than 2 million women who left the workforce in 2020 to return.

A recent Association of Corporate Counsel CLE webinar provided an important look at what employers should be thinking about as vaccination efforts here in the US speed up.

The results of a three-year study conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research indicated that paid family leave policies do not have a negative effect for employers.

In a small step to help parents feel more comfortable about their employment histories, employment-focused social network LinkedIn has added the option for users to describe their employment status as “stay-at-home,” whether it’s mother, father, or parent.

All public and private employees in New York may use paid time off to receive Covid-19 vaccinations. According to the language of the bill, employees are eligible for up to four hours of excused leave for each injection they receive. This excused leave does not affect any other accrued leave an employee might have already.

Governor Cuomo, who boasted that “we are sending a strong message that time is up on sexual harassment in the workplace” doesn’t appear to have thought his own message applied to him. Read all about it in Senior Associate Alex Berke’s piece “Cuomo’s Textbook Violations of His Own Sexual Harassment Law” in the Daily Beast.

If you need to brush up on FMLA and other questions pertaining to leave, including how FMLA works with New York State Paid Family Leave, we have a new training video from an event with Park Slope Parents that provides answers to many issues about family and medical leave and what you need to know.

Tucked into 2021’s $1.9 trillion stimulus package is a provision that could have life-changing effects for families with children: an expansion and reworking of the child tax credit. Championed solo for nearly two decades by Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the idea to expand the child tax credit has gained a new lease on life and more admirers as the pandemic and lockdowns have had a deleterious impact on families and children.

Whether it is increasing the number of hours spent working, picking up the slack in domestic life, being forced to quit to take care of children or other family, or leaving the job market entirely, women in the US have taken the brunt of the pandemic’s resulting economic crisis, so much so that it has been dubbed the first “she-cession.” The Financial Times has released a survey demonstrating that this is an issue for women internationally, not just in the United States.

The pandemic may be creating a path for the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which was first introduced in 2012 to become law. This law will help clarify and define the rights of women to receive accommodations in the workplace.

As New Yorkers follow the sexual harassment allegations against Governor Cuomo with interest, the New York Law Journal explores “What’s Next for the Investigation Into Sexual Harassment Claims Against Cuomo.”

As the pandemic has thrown millions into unemployment, has affected women disproportionately, and laid bare just how much working people rely on myriad forms domestic care, others are, as this wide-ranging profile in the New York Times magazine suggests, rediscovering the socialist feminism of Federici and her contemporaries, such as Selma James, Angela Davis, and the Combahee River Collective.