Sponsor critical after Alabama Senate committee cuts down parental leave bill

An Alabama Senate committee Wednesday narrowly passed a bill to extend parental leave to education employees, but only after reducing the length of the leave and the circumstances when it can be used. 

Those changes — which cut offered leave from 12 to six weeks; only allow one parent to take leave after childbirth and remove a provision granting leave for miscarriages and stillbirth — drew strong opposition from Sen. Vivian Davis Figures, D-Mobile, the sponsor of the legislation, who ended up voting against it. 

“I will be willing to negotiate the number of weeks from 12 weeks to eight weeks, perhaps, but I think this is very much needed, particularly for our people who work in the school system who will take care of our children,” she said.

The bill passed 8-7.

As introduced, SB 305, would provide school board employees with 12 weeks of parental leave for a birth, adoption, miscarriage or stillborn. 

“We depend on our teachers and our school personnel to be there for our children, to educate them, to educate all of us, and they don’t get any type of parental leave,” Figures said.

Senate Finance and Taxation Education Chair Arthur Orr, R-Decatur, provided a substitute of the bill that he said would make it match a bill that provides paid parental leave for state employees. He said the terms for that bill were worked out with the state Personnel Department.

HB 309, sponsored by Rep. Ginny Shaver, R-Leesburg, provides six weeks for female employees after the birth of a child and six weeks after the adoption of a child less than three years old, as amended by the Senate committee. If two state employees jointly adopt a child less than three years old, only one parent is eligible for leave.

“This substitute brings the state employees and education employees to be the same,” he said.

After the substitute was adopted, Sen. Rodger Smitherman, D-Birmingham, said he wanted to make sure that men were treated equally in the bill.

“Where in the sub that it assures that men are to be to be treated the same way as women?” he said.

Figures said that she was under the impression that the substitute would only amend the number of weeks.

“My bill included both the mother and the father,” she said. “It included the birth of a child, an alive child, the birth of a stillborn child, a miscarriage, as well as adoption, and to me all of those things carry emotions and care afterwards. So if that’s not the case, then I need to change my vote to a no.”

Orr said again the goal was for the bill to match Shaver’s bill as passed out of the Senate general fund committee.

Figures asked why Shaver’s bill could not be amended to match her bill and asked if he was trying to kill the legislation late in the session.

“I’d like to request that you at least pass this bill out and before it moves to the floor, that we negotiate what we’re going to do,” she said.

Figures moved for the substitute to be reconsidered, but it remained in place.

She told the other committee members ahead of the bill’s vote that she was shown “total disrespect.”

“I don’t ask for much around here,” she said. “I really don’t and I sure as hell don’t raise a lot of hell like I could. But for you to totally disrespect me after I humbly and respectfully asked you just to pass my bill out, you have the power to put it on a special order or not although I’m on Rules Committee but I don’t have a vote on that either but just let me know that I am totally, totally disappointed in all of you and that you are putting me in a position to vote no. On my own bill.”

The bill moves to the full Senate. It needs three legislative days to pass; there are six legislative days remaining.