Bill to boost temporary disability benefits stalls in N.Y. Assembly despite majority support

Jun. 15—ALBANY — Workers in New York have access to paid time off work for any illness or injury that makes them unable to do their job — but a team of lawmakers and advocates are hoping the legislature will update the 36-year-old cap on benefits that pays less than $200 per week.

Right now, if someone is temporarily unable to work because of illness or disability and has a full- or part-time job, they can apply for temporary disability insurance, with a payout capped at $170 per week. It's paid for by an insurance fund employers are required to pay into — and which many also take 60 cents per week from staff paychecks to fund.

That $170 rate has been in place since the program was last updated in 1989. The benefit can be taken for one 26-week period at most, and cannot be broken up. It's also subject to Social Security and Medicare taxes, and someone on the TDI program can't also take paid family leave. Both family leave and TDI are subject to the same 26-week restriction, and time for both is counted together.

Lawmakers and workers rights groups say that's not nearly enough money for the modern age — $170 in 1989 is equivalent to $442 now, according to the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank's inflation calculator.

Under a bill introduced by Assemblymember Michaelle C. Solages, D-Elmont, and Sen. Jessica Ramos, D-Queens, higher benefit payments would phase in starting 2027, eventually getting up to 67% of a workers weekly wages. The bill would also allow people to take the leave in pieces rather than all at once, but it doesn't change the 26-week cap or the connection with paid family leave time taken.

It would also increase the premiums employers would have to pay into the program to cover its costs, and allow them to take at most $2.20 per week from staff paychecks to cover some of their premium.

The Solages-Ramos bill has a fairly wide base of support, including from some small and midsized business groups like Main Street Alliance, which is a small business advocacy group, and the Small Business Majority, another advocacy group. Health and medical rights groups including the American Cancer Society Action Network back it, and about 50 other labor, health and small business groups support it.

They say it would essentially get New York paid medical leave to match the paid family leave program already in place, and some have pointed out that New Yorkers get better benefits when they leave to help a family member than when they need help themselves.

But some business groups don't back the bill, citing cost concerns for employers and employees. The state Business Council and the National Federation of Independent Businesses are both opposed, mostly over concerns of the increased costs that their members will have to bear.

The bill's supporters point out that many larger businesses, many represented by the Business Council and NFIB, have established internal paid medical leave as an employment benefit. They say that by passing the program at the state level, that will no longer be a strong negotiating tool for employers to bring on staff, and the playing field will be leveled slightly.

Last year, New York came close to boosting the benefit through the budget process. Gov. Kathleen C. Hochul included a boost to the TDI max benefit in her budget, which would have capped payments at about $1,200 per week and pegged the max to 67% the statewide average wage. It also would have pegged employee contributions to half a percent of weekly pay.

Although both chambers of the legislature advanced their own versions of the boost, ostensibly to start negotiation on a compromise between what the lawmakers and Hochul wanted, it was dropped in the final spending plan. Nothing regarding TDI reform was included in this year's budget, and the bill is now stalled in the Assembly, although it has support from a clear majority of members including nearly a dozen Republicans, with 89 co-sponsors listed. It only needs 75 to pass.

It's not clear if the bill will come to a floor vote before the Assembly leaves the Capitol for the year on Tuesday. The state Senate left town early Friday morning, having passed hundreds of bills far faster than the larger, more debate-heavy Assembly is able to.

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