More than 4 million workers in Pennsylvania live paycheck to paycheck without paid time off for family or medical care, forcing many to sacrifice health to make ends meet.

Others quit working entirely, shrinking the state’s economy and worsening its labor shortage. State Rep. Natalie Mihalek, R-Pittsburgh, said her mother was one of those who stayed home after her brother was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes as a child in the 1980s.

And decades later when she became a mother herself, Mihalek said she went back to work as an attorney just days after giving birth to each of three children. It’s a reality for most workers, but not all, she said, pointing to the 25% who do have access to paid leave – including every elected official in the General Assembly.

“This is not a luxury, it’s a necessity,” she told the House Labor and Industry Committee on Tuesday. “I’ve heard it called ‘Cadillac plan’ or ‘you should have planned ahead’ or ‘you should have had a different job.’ That’s just not the reality of our situation in this country, in Pennsylvania. It’s not the reality of our workforce we talk a lot about in this building.”

Mihalek and others supportive of paid family leave programs, like President Donald Trump, say the policy is humane and common sense. Its critics don’t necessarily disagree, but rather, don’t trust the complexity of the program to a bureaucracy and would rather see private insurance companies fill the gap.

The legislation pending before the committee would establish a state-run paid family leave program financed through a payroll tax deduction. Rep. Scott Barger, R-Hollidaysburg, said the state doesn’t have a good track record of managing large social programs, nor does it have the money to do so.

“Why can’t we do this? My answer would be because we’re broke,” he said. “We’re running out of cash. We are burning through it so fast and at some point, we have to delineate absolutely critical services from ones that maybe aren’t as critical or things that we would like to do maybe more than others – even though we’d like to do all of them.”

It’s not the first time the committee has had this discussion. In 2023, lawmakers critical of the idea said it would amount to a $3.9 billion tax on workers and would crush small businesses.

Rep. Dan Miller, D-Pittsburgh, sponsored the bill both times. On Tuesday, he said if 14 other states, including many of Pennsylvania’s neighbors, can figure out how to do it, the commonwealth can too.

“They figured out how to have paid leave that is robust, paid leave that brings in millions that did not have it before, they figured out how to do so in a way that never undermined its collective bargaining,” he said. “They figured out how to do so while their economy continues to move forward.”

The committee advanced the bill along party lines. It now awaits consideration on the House floor.

CHRISTEN SMITH | The Center Square

Christen Smith is the regional editor for the Center Square. The Center Square was launched in 2019 to fulfill the need for high-quality statehouse and statewide news across the United States. The Center Square is a project of the 501(c)(3) Franklin News Foundation, headquartered in Chicago.