Power & Politics: Ballot explainer

Power & Politics: The race for Connecticut House District 132; Mark Nielsen switches parties

Power & Politics: Breaking down the first Andy Kim-Curtis Bashaw debate 

Power & Politics: A guide to the state Legislature races

Power & Politics: How the mayor’s indictment is affecting New York City; McGuinness Boulevard redesign plan

Power & Politics: 1:1 with State Sen. Fazio and candidate Nick Simmons

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News 12 Staff

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Welcome back to this episode of Power and Politics. Everyone. I'm Amanda Bossard. Reproductive rights has emerged as one of the biggest issues of this presidential election cycle and ensuring mothers have access to care continues to be a central part of that conversation. So joining us now is Florie Wilson, the CEO of nonprofit reproductive and maternal health compass, which is working and advocating for working families to get that care and support Floy. Thanks so much for joining us and looking forward to this conversation here on power and politics. Thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to it too. Let's start from the beginning. What was the inspiration or motivation for you behind launching a nonprofit focused specifically on reproductive and maternal health? Yeah. Um You know, I'm a mother of two kids. I'm a working professional and at a certain point in my career, I've always been focused on the intersection of business impact and sustainability. And I thought, gosh, there's so much more that we can do to advance reproductive of maternal health care in the workplace. Um And so that lived experience is really what inspired me to do this work now part of that work is this corporate index that you recently released. It looks at reproductive health benefits offered by a lot of major employers in your opinion. What were some of the most compelling findings that came out of that report? Yeah. First. Um the research we did is very much rooted in the fact that having access to reproductive and maternal health benefits is overwhelmingly popular. A majority of workers across various generations, but especially Gen Z and millennials, they want access to these benefits. And it also cuts across gender lines, men and women equally value having access to these benefits. So it really felt like there was an opportunity to kind of leverage that popularity and desire to have these benefits with uh the information about well who is offering them? How common are the benefits? So, some of the key findings in our analysis is that number one um paid parental leave as well as family formation benefits, those are things like having access to fertility diagnostics. Um And IVF uh those are increasingly popular uh and available are offered by the largest employers in the US. So those are increasingly common benefits which is terrific news and great progress and certainly something that we want to celebrate while also acknowledging that still not every worker has access to those benefits. But we hope that that is an achievable goal in the next 5 to 10 years. Were there any areas where you saw that some employers might be falling short or could be doing more to support working moms and families. Yeah, certainly. I mean, one of the kind of overwhelming observations that our team had is that companies are really inconsistent in how much information they're putting out publicly about what is, or is not covered through their health plan and through the benefits and policies in their workplace. So our number one call to action for companies is share more information about what benefits are available to your workers. Again, they're so popular. This is like an easy thing that all companies should do. So that was our number one conclusion. Number two, we identified several areas, things that we call easy wins for employers. So offering things like for example, bereavement leave, which is quite common. Uh Many employers do offer paid bereavement leave, but typically they define that as if you've lost an immediate family member. And so one of the easy things that we encourage companies to do is to um explicitly include pregnancy loss as a, as a reason why an employee could use a a paid bereavement leave. Um That's one example of an of an easy win. Um Another example is um employers offering pre and postnatal doula services to their workers. So there's a huge body of data that shows that if you are a black brown or indigenous woman in America being pregnant is, is actually a very uh can be a very dangerous, um dangerous situation and you are more prone to having health complications. But when women are uh when women have access to pre and postnatal dual services, they end up having healthier pregnancies, healthier births and are kind of more able and ready to heal and recover. And from the perspective of an employer that matters because if you have a healthy workforce, they're gonna be better able to return to work after having given birth. I imagine doing this research here in the US is unique because there is no national paid leave policy here in this country. Does that put the responsibility largely on employers to be providing these benefits? Is that something that you found in the work? Yes, absolutely. And I'm so glad you raised that point. I, I do think that, you know, most Americans, we don't really realize that we are the only industrial country where number one, we don't all have access to the same health plans we really are are kind of subject to whatever health plans our employers are offering through employer sponsored health plans. So that's one area where there's a lot of inconsistency in what might be covered, the quality of the uh uh benefit that you have access to. And then the other area where again, here in the United States, we're really in a unique situation is that we are the only industrialized country that offers neither paid sick leave for all workers, nor paid parental leave for birth. Givers and new parents. Um and, and so, you know, this creates a situation where the full burden of offering these kinds of benefits falls squarely on the shoulders of employers. And, and so we see an opportunity again to, to encourage companies to offer these benefits, to provide them with the resources on how to do it. But then also to celebrate companies that are meeting a high standard, right? Those are the same companies that workers are going to want to work for. They will be more likely to apply for jobs, those companies and they'll be more likely to stick around and be productive and loyal workers when they know they have access to those benefits. So, um that's really what we're trying to kind of highlight and emphasize through our work, given the unique situation that we have here in the United States. And it's reassuring to hear that a lot of those benefits are becoming more widely available. But now the burden is on us to get the word out and those companies too, Flori Wilson, thank you so much for your time and the conversation here on power and politics and your work. We appreciate it. Thanks so much. Appreciate your time still to come. We're less than a month out from election day. So we're checking in with the board of elections to see how it is preparing for voters to cast their ballots that inside. Look next here on power and politics.

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Welcome back. We're less than a month away from election day and officials tell us that high voter turnout is expected. News tells Dan Sarain sat down with the executive director of the city's board of elections for a look at how they're preparing in a city of millions. Every vote counts. Michael Ryan's job is to make sure they all get counted. The elections process is evolving now, a national program brings election officials more knowledge, certified, election registration, administrative certifications, a clear label that the individuals that we are running our boroughs and, and our general office uh have received a certification training uh in a myriad of aspects of the elections process. Uh to show that we have a commitment to professionalism. 1600 of those certifications nationwide, 15 of those certified are here in New York City and executive director, Ryan is one of them. This is another uh enhancement uh to the uh to the knowledge base of our managers and uh executives so that we have a firmer footing uh to do our jobs. Moving forward from election history to budgeting and anticipating trends. Ryan calls it a comprehensive program, the dedication to improving the process is is something uh that uh an effective uh industry will always strive for and elections are no different. New York City is the first jurisdiction in the state to have these certified election administrators in lower Manhattan Dan Sain news 12, the city's efforts to support domestic violence survivors were the focus of a city council hearing this week. A report found that between 2018 and 2023 more than half of survivors left the Human Resources Administration's domestic violence shelters for another shelter. Members of the council asked city officials about that trend during the meeting could be quite challenging for a survivor to find appropriate housing. And the last thing that we we want of course um is to have a survivor enter ad v emergency shelter and have to leave because they feel as if this is an unsafe or an unsafe accommodation. Council members also asked about ongoing challenges and the success of programs like project home which helps find housing for survivors. A new bill passed by the city council aims to help boost maternal health care around the city. It aims to make more information, more accessible, requiring the city to post details about its maternal mortality review committee online along with information for new parents and employers must also let employees know about their workplace lactation room policy. That's all for this week here on power and politics on news 12. Thanks for watching.

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Council Member Carlina Rivera and nonprofit CEO Flory Wilson join the show this week.

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Council Member Carlina Rivera and nonprofit CEO Flory Wilson join the show this week.

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