Over a quarter century later, unpaid leave law not enough to support small businesses

As the 30th anniversary of the implementation of the Family and Medical Leave Act comes up this year, it’s time to move beyond unpaid leave and support Minnesota’s small business employees and owners like myself with a Paid Leave bill. Since the beginning, my business has had family needs built in. My children were in middle school when we bought the shop, and they found themselves in active roles around the café right away. My wife, brother, and two sisters were instrumental in getting the shop purchased and opened. My mother, stepfather, in-laws, uncle, and even my grandmother pitched in as well. Butter Bakery is rooted in family and still feels like our family’s place even though it’s just me here these days.

It is with regret and sadness that I acknowledge that as an employer, it has been much more difficult to be family-friendly for staff with new babies. Four years ago, I had two staff members take three weeks of paternity leaves. I wanted them to take time to bond with their new babies. It was the right thing to do and it helped me retain valuable staff members in a tight labor market. However, it cost me thousands of dollars to do so. And the Leave I could offer was haphazard, limited, and not sustainable in the long run. It meant I couldn’t support other staff during that time - a system that creates winners and losers is not family-friendly. And while I had a little cash on hand to make those two leaves happen, a couple of years earlier and a couple of years later, I could only offer unpaid leaves to two staff to deliver their babies. Neither returned to work for our cafe and were missed greatly.

So, while we smile when children dash in the Butter Bakery Cafe door and head directly to the toy box, or proudly share their “usual” order of mini-pancakes, or measure themselves at our growth chart, or feed our patio’s sculpture-chickens, I feel the discomfort at knowing that we struggle to care for our own staff’s parenting needs. As an employer, I’m happy to take responsibility for paying an equitable, fair, living wage. I’m happy to offer staff a set schedule and flexibility as needed to attend to parenting challenges and childcare arrangements. I provide earned paid time off for sickness and assist with shift swaps to protect scheduled hours. But it isn’t enough.

I need help with a way to fund longer paid time off. I need help to support young families who don’t want to give up jobs they enjoy in order to get benefits they need to survive. My employees shouldn’t have to choose to work at a large employer in our state like Target (which began to offer paid leave in 2019) to get support for family and longer medical leaves.

I’d be willing to help fund needs like these through a state-supported leave program. A small payroll deduction is sustainable as a budgeting tool. A small amount, on a regular basis, can work for me, while a big expense with unpredictable time frames -- like paying one cook’s salary and another’s overtime costs to cover his work while out on leave -- does not. Family-friendly has always been good business, and nearly two-thirds of small business owners agree, according to a Main Street Alliance Survey.

We came close to passing a paid leave program in Minnesota last year, and this year we are hopeful it will pass and begin to provide small businesses like mine the support we need to be family-friendly. At the federal level, the Family Act is slowly moving its way through congress but will likely be set aside yet again. It is time we as a society recognize that supporting families, especially new fathers, and mothers, is truly a great way to support small businesses.

Daniel Swenson-Klatt, Owner of Butter Bakery Cafe in Minneapolis, Minnesota