Republicans consistently support corporation-friendly policies, the author writes. | REUTERS GOP's sham support for workers

Last week, House Republicans voted against working families by passing the misleadingly named Working Families Flexibility Act. In the lead up to the vote, the House Republicans’ campaign arm, the NRCC, unveiled a digital ad campaign targeting “mommy blogs” in hopes of convincing people that they are on the side of working families.

In reality, they dusted off a decades-old bill that that, despite its name, makes it more difficult for working parents to take time to care for their children. The ads lambaste Democrats for not supporting their proposal, which empowers employers to pay their employees less.


Meanwhile, Democrats in this Congress have introduced several meaningful bills that would actually expand and protect working families’ ability to earn a fair wage, care for sick family members, and access healthcare. These bills currently do not have support from any Republicans, yet Republicans are trying to put Democrats on the defensive on these issues.

But the significance of the NRCC’s campaign is not their support for bad policy – Republicans consistently support policies that make life easier for corporations, not the families they employ, moms in particular. They voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in 2009, blocked the Pay Equity Act, and continue to block pro-middle class policies like the Healthy Families Act, the Paycheck Fairness Act, and expanding the Family and Medical Leave Act. And who is surprised, when House Speaker John Boehner once said that with the passage of FMLA in 1993 “the light of freedom will grow dimmer.”

What is significant about this campaign is that Republicans appear to have realized that modernizing workplace policies to help women and families is becoming an increasingly powerful electoral issue. And they’re right.

In 2012, women voted for President Obama by a 12-point margin. Post-election polls found that the candidates’ positions on policies that directly impact middle class women were at the core of why they voted the way they did. A post-election survey for National Partnership for Women & Families found that 96 percent of self-described Democrats, 87 percent of Independents, and 73 percent of Republicans believe it is important for Congress to consider new laws including paid sick days and family and medical leave insurance. And a Grove Insight poll on behalf of EMILY’s List found 78 percent of women voters in 2012 believed it is important to create laws ensuring women make equal pay for equal work. These issues transcend partisan and gender lines, and countless focus groups reaffirm voter frustrations with elected officials who stand in the way of these common-sense policies.

Republicans are playing politics with an issue that finds far-reaching support across party lines. With this new campaign they hope to have their cake and eat it too: close the gender gap by misleading women voters, while continuing to side with corporations over working families.

Groups like the National Partnership for Women & Families and 160 other groups oppose the Working Families Flexibility Act (more accurately described as the Pay Working Families Less Act). These groups oppose the bill because it allows employees to pay workers less for their work – telling them that if they forgo overtime pay, they can store the extra hours as comp time and use it as paid time off when they need it – for things like caring for a sick child, going to the doctor, or attending a parent-teacher conference.

In reality, the law allows employers to offer unpaid overtime hours to their workers in exchange for banked comp time but it does not require them to let workers take the time they’ve earned, even in emergency situations. In fact, Republicans rejected an amendment that would have required employers to let employees use the comp time for medical needs, school meetings, and veterans’ services.

Further, the bill gives employers the right to cap the comp time an employee can bank without warning. Oh, and if the business goes bankrupt, employers can walk away without paying their workers for the time they’ve accrued.

This Republican strategy, rather than illustrating a new-found commitment to America’s families further bolsters the argument that they just don’t get it. Republicans know they have a problem with swing women voters – but they will continue to have a problem with them so long as they support policies that only benefit large corporations. Democrats have an important responsibility to keep the facts straight – and draw a sharp distinction between the priorities of both parties.

While Republicans are investing early by advertising their support for sham bills, Democrats have largely remained silent, despite consistently supporting the right policies. Democrats need to push back against Republican efforts to co-opt this issue by publicly engaging in this debate and fighting for the bills they’ve introduced. Voters deserve to know who is working to help workers and parents, and who is lying about it.

The 2012 election exposed an out of touch Republican party; now their campaigns of misinformation show even more disrespect for the American people – they think we will fall for it. These are not just winning policies for middle class families – they are winning issues for Democrats who engage on it.

- Molly Murphy is a senior associate at Anzalone Liszt Grove Research, a Democratic polling and consulting firm