Bipartisan Paid Leave, Workforce Bills Lead 2024 Labor Agenda

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are setting their sights on big labor policy goals in 2024 as they strategize to pass workforce development and paid leave legislation—issues that haven’t managed to overcome opposing efforts for decades.

As the holidays approached, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce advanced two major workforce items by wide bipartisan margins. Meanwhile, groups of Republican and Democratic lawmakers in the House and Senate have been crafting paid leave policy with the goal of passing it through both chambers by the end of 2024.

Those incremental wins give hope to proponents of both measures. The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act—which the House panel voted to reauthorize with key changes—hadn’t had a bipartisan reauthorization for nearly a decade. And since 2013, every Congress has seen federal paid family and medical leave legislation introduced—both Democraticand bipartisanproposals—but all have failed to gain traction.

The collaborative work on paid leave has also linked the interests of advocates and members of the business community that are seeking a federal solution, who say the bipartisan working groups are a breath of fresh air.

Congress was notably unproductive in 2023 and has punted nearly all must-pass legislation to early 2024, already filling up its agenda. Lawmakers will also have to campaign for 2024 elections, eating up several legislative days.

But despite those difficulties, the progress on labor priorities in 2023 has stakeholders optimistic about a pathway to finally tackling paid leave and workforce development after decades of inaction.

“When you look at 2024 you have to be really an optimistic person to believe that we will see a lot of progress,” said Jocelyn Frye, president of the National Partnership for Women & Families, who noted that she’s still hopeful despite the challenges. “Will it be hard to make progress in 2024? Absolutely. Is it possible? Absolutely.”

Workforce Development

House Education and the Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) and her Democratic counterpart Bobby Scott (Va.) negotiated over months to draft the bill to reauthorize WIOA.

The two longtime colleagues served on the committee when the law was first passed in 2014—Foxx was the original sponsor—but have failed to produce a bipartisan revamp to the program ever since.

The Stronger Workforce for America Act (H.R. 6655) would make some key changes to the program long sought by many in the workforce development community. The bill would direct more funding to the training piece itself, reform eligibility criteria for providers of workforce training, and strengthen accountability mechanisms in the system.

The committee advanced the bill by a resounding 44-1 vote Dec. 12, leaving Scott confident in future action.

“I think the votes are there on the floor coming out of the committee like that,” Scott told Bloomberg Law.

The committee also advanced the Bipartisan Workforce Pell Act (H.R. 6585) by a wide margin, which would extend the use of Pell grants to fund training programs as short as eight weeks. Advocates have long said the restriction of the grants to mostly two- and four-year college degrees has made short-term skills training programs unaffordable for people in lower-income brackets.

The legislation could reach the House floor as early as this month, and a decisive vote by the House could motivate the Senate to start working on the bills, said Yelena Vaynberg, Government and Regulatory Affairs executive at IBM Corp.

“Senators are mindful that there needs to be something done on workforce and WIOA, and short-term Pell could be part of that broader solution,” Vayneberg said. “Really aligning those fundamental pieces of our workforce development could potentially help as we are looking at rapid changes and skill needs as industries are adopting technology.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—who chairs the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee—told Bloomberg Law he will take a look at what the House has drafted, but didn’t specify a timeline for hearings or future plans. The HELP panel mostly stayed away from WIOA in 2023, and hasn’t yet held any hearings on the law.

Even if the committee wants to take up WIOA reauthorization, it will have to navigate a very tight schedule.

The coming year will have fewer legislative days than in 2023 because of the election cycle, and a long list of must-pass legislation is due in the coming months. Deadlines on government funding, a reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration, a five-year farm bill, and a high-profile surveillance law are all set to expire in the first half of 2024.

Paid Leave

When it comes to paid leave, House lawmakers are aiming to introduce a framework as soon as this month when they return from the holiday break. The Senate working group is taking input from stakeholders until Jan. 31, and their separate framework is expected sometime soon after that.

Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.), co-chair of the House group, has said the proposal will aim at increasing paid leave access while attempting to harmonize the series of state laws, often described as a patchwork, that have left many in the business community asking for federal standards.

While lawmakers say they’re committed to making real progress on paid leave, there’s also acknowledgment that the constraints of a divided Congress mean the measures will have to be incremental.

“It’s time that we have federal action of some kind, and sometimes you have to break the ice a little bit before you get what you want,” said Rep. Colin Allred (D-Texas), a member of the House paid leave working group.

“It’d be great if we could have a larger comprehensive bill straight out of the gate. That’s not often the case, legislatively speaking,” he said. “The Civil Rights Act of 1957 had to precede the Civil Rights Act of 1964. So sometimes you have to get what you can and then you keep pushing.”

An extension of tax credits for employers as well as greater public-private partnerships in the insurance space are among the proposals coming from the group, Houlahan has said. Lawmakers are also looking at ways to reduce the administrative burden for multi-state employers that have to comply with differing state paid family and medical leave laws.

But some advocates still hope lawmakers will push for more.

“I encourage folks to really look at the data and the evidence that we have available,” said Frye of the National Partnership for Women & Families, who noted that voluntary programs and tax credits haven’t historically boosted paid leave access. “It’s important to make progress that is actually concrete progress.”

Curran McSwigan, senior economic policy adviser at the think tank Third Way, noted that the makeup of the working groups offers encouraging signs that they will craft substantial policy.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), co-chair of the Senate group, has led the paid leave charge for the last decade and is a sponsor of the FAMILY Act—Democrats’ comprehensive paid leave proposal. Her Republican counterpart Bill Cassidy (La.) is a “dealmaker” looking to find compromise, McSwigan said.

Sens. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), and Todd Young (R-Ind.) are also members.

“What you’re seeing is this diverse group on the Democratic side and also on the Republican side,” McSwigan said. “So I think it’s really encouraging because they all have different priorities, but seeing them come together and really commit to making progress on this issue is something we’re really excited about.”