San Francisco became the first US city to mandate fully paid parental leave on Tuesday. The new  measures required employers to  provide fully paid leave for new parents.

The new bill was approved unanimously by the Board of Supervisors. It will give six weeks of fully paid time off to  new mothers and fathers. The benefit is now offered to some government sector employees and  some private workers, especially who work in the tech industry.

The author of the bill,  Supervisor Scott Wiener, said that, “Our country’s parental leave policies are woefully behind the rest of the world, and today San Francisco has taken the lead in pushing for better family leave policies for our workers.”

“We shouldn’t be forcing new mothers and fathers to choose between spending precious bonding time with their children and putting food on the table," he said.

“These workers are the least likely to have access to employer-provided paid parental leave and they struggle the most with taking a pay cut to stay at home and bond with their child,” Wiener said.

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Dee Dee Workman, the chamber's vice president of public policy, said that, "It is already a struggle in San Francisco because there’s so many mandates placed on businesses and the city doesn’t differentiate between small and big business.”

The president of the San Francisco Council of District Merchants Associations, Henry Karnilowicz,  said that, “We’re stuck in a position. If we don’t support it, you are the bad guys.” He called the city proposal “unfair.”

Nandini