Federal employees are about to get something most private employees don't get: 12 weeks of paid parental leave.

NPR reports that although there's still division within the Congress over whether federal employees should be paid to take parental leave—predictably, Republicans have not been champions of the idea despite White House support, while Democrats have been working toward just such a benefit for years—the measure passed, within a defense bill, in a move that also gave President Trump his much-vaunted Space Force as a new branch of the Air Force.

The family leave provision in the must-pass National Defense Authorization Act would provide up to 12 weeks of paid leave for the birth, adoption or foster of a new child, and would affect the 2.1 million workers employed by the federal government. It is also the first change to federal family leave policy since 1993.

It does not, however, provide paid leave for caregivers of family members or for personal injury, according to CNBC, and workers will still have to rely on the Family and Medical Leave Act and its provision for unpaid leave.

The U.S. has had no federal policy for parental leave, although some companies voluntarily offer it and eight states and the District of Columbia have passed such provisions. Still, just 19 percent of U.S. workers have access to paid family leave through their employers, while 40 percent can draw on paid personal medical leave via employer-provided temporary disability insurance.

Other countries, however, have not been so reluctant to provide paid leave for new parents; in fact, CNBC cited Representative Carolyn Maloney, D-NY, chairwoman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, saying in a congressional hearing that the U.S. is one of just two countries in the world without any sort of mandatory paid leave, the other being Papua New Guinea.

"The U.S. is dead last in the world in terms of not providing any sort of paid leave," said Wendy Chun-Hoon, co-director of Family Values @ Work, a group that advocates for paid family leave. That appears to be about to change.

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Fed employees could get 12 weeks paid parental leave

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