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Print Edition StoriesFriday, November 21, 2008
Policy Tracker
Capitol Hill tackles family-leave regs; Entrepreneurship rates tumble
MHT reporter Efrain Viscarolasaga on NECN: Green tech brings jobs back to Mass.
MHT Editor Doug Banks on NECN: How companies are using social media
How is the economic crisis affecting tech companies?
New family-leave regulations please employers, rile unions
Business groups welcomed new regulations governing the Family and Medical Leave Act, but labor unions and other groups plan to lobby Congress to overturn the changes next year.
The Department of Labor issued a final rule Nov. 17 that aims to clarify the rights and responsibilities of both workers and employers under the 15-year-old law. The FMLA enables workers to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave a year in order to deal with family or medical emergencies. Business groups had pushed for the changes, contending previous regulations were too hard to administer. Plus, they contended some employees were abusing family and medical leave by taking it for purposes not intended by Congress.
Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., who authored the FMLA, said the changes would require workers “to jump through bureaucratic hoops at a time when they should be able to focus solely on ... the needs of their families.”
Opponents of the changes hope to convince Congress to use the Congressional Review Act to repeal the FMLA revisions next year.
U.S. entrepreneurship rate falls, but remains high
The percentage of Americans who were engaged in starting or running a new business fell from 12.4 percent in 2005 to 9.6 percent in 2007.
That’s according to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, a study conducted by Babson College and Baruch College. Despite the decline, however, the entrepreneurship rate in the U.S. was 50 percent higher than other high-income countries on average.
Opportunity remained the biggest motivation for starting a business in the U.S., but the percentage of entrepreneurs who started a business out of necessity grew from 12.1 percent in 2005 to 15.6 percent in 2007. Minorities showed higher rates of entrepreneurship than whites. One reason may be employment discrimination. More than 70 percent of African Americans and more than 72 percent of Mexican Americans said they started businesses after feeling they were rejected for a job because of their ethnicity.
— Kent Hoover, ACBJ Wire Service
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