PathWays PA Policy Blog

The Pennsylvania State House voted yesterday to pass a 2017-2018 budget package that cuts $815 million in spending from the budget proposed by Governor Wolf in February. The final vote was 114-85, with most (but not all) Republicans supporting the plan but no Democratic votes. The bill now moves on to the Senate. Budget cuts could be found across the board, including the human services line items that we follow. Some increases to education made by the governor remain in the budget, although early childhood education is getting a smaller increase than requested. Please take a look at the chart below to see how your budget items fared, or look at the full budget here . Your next steps: Look at the line items that matter to you, and call your state senator to share your thoughts. Should something be getting more money? Less? Tell your senator today. (PS - The Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center has a Fair Share Tax proposal on their website that could give you some ideas on how a...

As in most years, we've put together a graphic highlighting programs of special interest to PathWays PA and our clients. Please take a look and let us know what you think of the Governor's proposed funding methods.

Women make up half of America’s workforce. Two-thirds of America’s caregivers are female. Does the math not add up? Wait until you see the numbers on their access to sick time. 43% of female workers in the private sector do not have any paid sick time. 54% of working women have no paid time to care for themselves or their children. 82% of women earning under $8.25 an hour do not have one minute of sick time. When mothers try to care for their children, 42% find that they are unable to because they must work. Only 27% of daughters could take care of their parents. One in five women say that either they or someone they know has been fired or disciplined for taking time off to either recover from an illness or injury or to care for a family member. The hardest hit are women of color. More often than not, colored families have a woman as their main breadwinner. Many low-income families are of color, and 3.5 days of missed pay could mean a month without groceries. Job loss is devastati...

Nearly one in four American working mothers need to return to work within two weeks of giving birth. With that starting statistic in mind, let us take a look at what this means for most mothers.  Women who are forced to return to work before they are ready face a great deal of challenges. Many face depression and other mental issues. Physical challenges exist for these women as well. In one case, a mother was forced to pump breast milk in her car during her lunch break because her factory job did not have a lactation room. New children also feel the pain from lack of maternity leave. Without being around their mothers, many children do not develop socially and emotionally as well as an infant who created a stronger bond with his/her mother. So what is the solution? Paid family leave time. Currently, only 13 percent of working people in America have access to paid leave. The benefits to paid family leave are astounding. A 20% drop in infant mortality rate and an increase in ...

The American Association of University Women (AAUW) has released the 2015 edition of their guide , "The Simple Truth about the Gender Pay Gap." Since the 1970s, when women's annual earnings were only 57% of men's annual earnings for full-time workers, the gender pay gap has narrowed, due in part to women's advances in education and workforce participation. Still, in 2013 women were only making 78% of men's earnings and, in the past decade, the pay gap has barely budged. After accounting for college major, occupation, economic sector, hours worked, months unemployed since graduation, GPA, type of undergraduate institution, institution selectivity, age, geographical region, and marital status, AAUW found that only one year after graduation there was a 7% difference in the earnings of male and female college graduates that could not be explained . This gap only increases with time and age. Women also experience other barriers in the workforce, such as the...

From our friends at Maternity Care Coalition MCC will host a twitter chat this afternoon on Early Childhood Education for all (Immigrant and Non-Immigrant) South Philadelphia Babies and Infants using #SPhillyBabies @MccPolicy . Sample tweets can be seen here. For more information contact Koyuki Yip, kyip@maternitycarecoalition.org , 215.989.3563.

Maternity Care Coaltion's (MCC) report, which compares insurance options in cities across Pennsylvania, demonstrates that women face significant barriers and discriminatory practices when buying health insurance in the individual insurance market. The study revealed that individual market health plans largely exclude vital maternity coverage for women. Findings showed that only 20% of "best-selling" individual insurance plans available on www.eHealthInsurance.com, a leading online source for insurance sales, offer maternity coverage in Pennsylvania. Read the Full Report

From our friends at NACW and NWLC : Forty years ago, women were expected to quit their jobs when they became pregnant. Back then, pregnancy was widely regarded as a disabling condition. Today, it is now a well-accepted fact that most women remain perfectly healthy and able to work throughout their pregnancies, and since 1978 pregnancy discrimination has been illegal. Yet women in physically demanding jobs are STILL being forced out of the workplace, just because they need temporary, minor modifications to their job duties during pregnancy. As a result, expectant mothers are losing their jobs when they can least afford it. Here are three startling examples: Heather got fired from Wal-Mart for carrying a water bottle. Natasha was forced onto unpaid leave and then fired because her district manager at Rent-A-Center found out she needed help with occasional heavy lifting on the sales floor. Sarah lost her job at a fast food restaurant for taking bathroom and water breaks. And ...

  From our friends at PHAN At the age of 22 Stephanie Perez had completed college, was onto graduate school, healthy and excited to be bringing a new baby girl into this world. This was 4 years ago - before the Affordable Care Act - so it was perfectly legal when her grandfather, legal guardian, received a letter saying Stephanie would be kicked off his health insurance on her 23rd birthday - the same month her baby was due. When Stephanie tried to purchase insurance in the private marketplace, she was either denied or companies refused to cover her pre-existing condition: pregnancy. If the Affordable Care Act were law and all its provisions had been implemented when Stephanie was 23 here is what would be different: Stephanie would not be denied health insurance coverage due to pregnancy, or any other pre-existing condition. Stephanie would be able to buy affordable health insurance in the state insurance marketplace, which would have guaranteed maternity and new...

Did you know that in Pennsylvania it's legal to charge women more than men for health care??  Health insurance companies say it's because women can have babies, but a woman is likely to be charged discriminatory rates throughout her entire life. And in Pennsylvania, health insurance companies are not required to cover pregnancy. The new health care law ends this and bans insurance companies from counting pregnancy as a 'pre-existing condition.' But, those protections don't go into place until 2014. Women can't wait! Sign the petition . Tell your legislators to give these protections to Pennsylvania women now. Whatever the Supreme Court decides, women in Pennsylvania deserve these protections! Join PHAN’s Tuesday Night Policy Call Series on June 5th at 6:00 to find out the latest around legislation in Pennsylvania to do just this! This call will feature Erin Cusack of Maternity Care Coalition. RSVP here . From our friends at the Pennsylvania Health...

From our friends at 9 to 5. In 2012, getting pregnant can still cost you your job. Because of loopholes between discrimination and disability laws, employers are refusing to accommodate even simple requests that help workers maintain a healthy pregnancy. Here are three startling examples of women who were fired for doing what was best for their pregnancies:  A retail sales associate in Salina, Kansas was fired for drinking water while working because it violated store policy.  A nursing home activities director in Valparaiso, Indiana lost her job because she could no longer lift heavy tables, an activity that took up less than 10 minutes of her workday and with which her coworkers routinely volunteered to assist.  A pregnant truck driver in Tennessee was instructed by her obstetrician not to lift more than 20 pounds and sought light duty work. Her employer terminated her, as it made such modifications only to those injured on the job.  Sounds crazy, righ...

This Mother's Day, tell you legislators to insure all Pennsylvania's mothers. Health insurance is absolutely critical to ensuring healthy births. Yet in Pennsylvania, maternity care does not need to be included in individual and small group health plans. Important legislation -- SB 1063 and HB 1957 -- will expand pregnant women's access to insurance in our state and guarantee that pregnancy can no longer be considered a pre-existing condition by insurance companies. Join Maternity Care Coalition for a Virtual Mother's Day Campaign on Friday, May 11th and tell the Pennsylvania legislature that maternity coverage should be in ALL Pennsylvania health insurance plans! Here's what you can do: Tweet to your Representative or post on their Facebook wall  Call your Representative ( Find them here )  Have you been denied maternity insurance? Post your story on Facebook or Tweet it   Don't forget to mention @mccpolicy and use the hashtag #InsureMothersNow. ...

SPECIAL EVENTS Federal Policy Updates A WEBINAR FOR THE BUDGET-PERPLEXED Stop the Slashing: The human needs advocates' simple guide to understanding - and defeating - unprecedented attacks on the federal budget Tuesday, June 7, 2:00 - 3:00 p.m. Eastern time Register today! https://chn.peachnewmedia.com/store/seminar/seminar.php?seminar=8116 Massive cuts in essential services like Medicaid, Medicare, SNAP/food stamps, education and children's services, help to low-income communities such as housing and the Community Services Block Grant, and virtually every other human needs program. A large number of proposals being floated in Washington would devastate these services and would make it far harder for the federal government to respond to economic downturns and solve looming national problems. These proposals don't have straightforward names like "The Act to Slash Health Care for Older Americans" or "The Act to Cut Services for Low- and Moderate-In...

SPECIAL EVENTS EVER SEEN CITY HALL WRAPPED IN THOUSANDS OF POSTCARDS? Neither have we. That's why you should join us on May 26 at 8 AM at City Hall. Come out and show your support as we wrap City Hall with the thousands of postcards of people like you who support passing this bill. Not to mention have fun doing something that's never been done before! To register please visit: http://earnedsickdayspostcards.eventbrite.com /. For more information about this event contact Jasmine Rivera of ACTION United at jmrivera@gm.slc.edu . Come be part of this historic event! JOIN OUR TWITTER RALLY AND BLOG CARNIVAL FOR PAID SICK DAYS IN PHILADELPHIA This week, MomsRising will be working with the Coalition for Healthy Families and Workplaces to hold a "blog carnival" for paid sick days. What's a blog carnival? A blog carnival is a collection of blogposts on one topic. It brings together the latest research, analysis and personal reflection and stories to offer read...

Are you ready to take action? PathWays PA now offers an Action Center that you can use to write to your legislators and to your local news media on the issues that matter to you. Legislative Action : Using the Action Center , you can send emails directly to your legislators about the issues that matter to you. We include facts and statistics on the issues, but you get to decide what you want to put in the letter! You don't even need to know who your legislators are - just put in your zip code and the alert will automatically go to the right people. Currently in the Action Center , you can write to your legislators about: Earned Sick Time : Everyone gets sick, but not everyone has time to get better. 2,227,059 Pennsylvania workers lack access to earned sick time, meaning that when they or their families are sick, they must choose between working while sick or losing their pay - or possibly their jobs. If you believe all Pennsylvanians should have access to earned sick t...

When you go on an interview, employers can't ask you about your race or religion.  But to the surprise of many, employers can ask about marital and familial status - and they do.   Kiki Peppard learned all about the impact of these questions when, after moving to Pennsylvania over 15 years ago, 19 employers in a row asked whether she was married and had children.   After learning she was a single mother, they all terminated the interviews. Research shows that mothers, including single mothers, face discrimination and negative stereotyping when they look for employment.  While these questions seem close to sex discrimination, interviewers are not prohibited from asking them so long as they ask both men and women. The information that potential employers learn about an interview's familial status often becomes a factor in whether or not they hire a candidate - even though that information has nothing to do with how qualified a person is for the job.  Th...

Each year on a Tuesday in April, people across the country (including PathWays PA) celebrate Equal Pay Day , the day when women's earnings finally catch up with men's earnings from the previous year.  As we mark Equal Pay Day, it is important to know what the numbers mean, and what effect they have on all families. If women earned equal wages to their male peers, they could use that money to buy groceries for a family of four for eight months. (The USDA estimates that a family of four spending "liberally" on groceries will spend $264.10 per week .  The wage gap per week is $162.) Women are the " breadwinner" or "co-breadwinner " in two-thirds of families in the United States, which shows the extent to which families are relying on wages earned by women. One year after graduating college , women earn on average only 80 percent of their male counterparts' wages.  During the next 10 years, women's wages fall even further behind, dropping t...

The AARP Bulletin recently published a list of job questions that stray into possibly biased or illegal territory. Among the questions mentioned is one including maternal profiling (aka “Are you married? Who cares for your children?”) An additional question referenced by the AARP (and one that will become even more relevant as Pennsylvanians age) is "Who cares for your elderly parent?" Pennsylvania is one of many states that does not protect people based on marital status, as Kiki Peppard learned 15 years ago. Make sure that you are prepared for the questions that may come up in your interviews, particularly those that have no right to be asked.

We’ve discussed pay equity and maternal profiling on this blog. But this June 11 posting by Womenstake brings the two together, highlighting a study that shows mothers were far less likely to be hired than non-mothers, and earned about $11,000 less than non-mothers. Fathers, meanwhile, were judged to be more committed than non-fathers - a study in 2000 even showed that fathers received a “wage premium” in comparison to non-fathers. The fathers in our lives should be honored, especially in this week leading up to Father’s Day. But let’s not confuse honoring one parent by discriminating against another.

In the job hunt, employers can’t discriminate on the basis of religion, race, or ancestry. But 15 years ago, Kiki Peppard learned the hard way that employers could and did ask her if she had children and if she was married. As a single mother of two in 1994, she was asked time and time again about her familial status, and rejected from the many jobs she interviewed for. Since then, Ms. Peppard has worked in Pennsylvania to end “maternal profiling.” Despite her hard work and some legislative support, the bills continue to die in committee. Ms. Peppard’s situation is not unique – only 22 states prohibit asking if an applicant is married or has children. She is now asking the White House Council on Women and Girls to take up the case as well. Please write to your state and federal legislators today to ensure that maternal profiling stops soon!