When Luna, a prep cook and dishwasher in Upstate New York, broke her arm, she found herself unable to work and struggling to get by. Between doctor’s visits and disability insurance paperwork, she learned just how thin her state’s medical leave protections really were. New York’s Temporary Disability Insurance only offers $170 a week, and it doesn’t protect an employee’s job when they take leave, even one with health insurance. To change this reality, workers are building power through policy implementation and enforcement, working in partnership with A Better Balance, a nonprofit advocacy organization and Ford grantee. 

Since 2006, A Better Balance has partnered with working people to advance, enforce, and defend policies that support families and promote gender and racial justice. By leading from the ground up, workers are maintaining their economic security and building lasting civic power. Here, Inimai Chettiar, president of A Better Balance, discusses how partnering directly with workers helps identify and close critical information gaps so working people can fully understand, use, and shape their rights.

Economic Security Is a Democracy Issue

Regardless of their income or background, people should be able to exercise their rights and participate fully in civic and economic life, without having to choose between caring for their family and earning a living. Yet gaps in the law leave millions of workers, particularly women of color, in low-wage and hourly jobs, vulnerable to discrimination, losing support during life’s critical moments, and getting pushed out of jobs when pregnant, ill, or caring for a loved one.  

Paid family and medical leave, paid sick time, and protections for pregnant and caregiving workers build the floor under people’s economic security. That floor lets people meet their families’ needs without giving up their livelihood or their voice. 

And when a law actually delivers—when paid leave rights can be exercised, when protections hold up even after an employer pushes back—a person encounters the government as responsive and the rule of law as real, sometimes for the first time. That lived proof is what renews people’s faith in democracy.

Finding and Filling the Information Gaps

We often hear that people know that what happened to them is unfair, but do not know what laws exist to protect them, whether they qualify, or how to exercise that right. Employers often don’t volunteer this information either. Even when workers do know they have rights, researching the large web of laws that exist in our country that cover health, pregnancy, and caregiving in the workplace can quickly become overwhelming. 

There is a maze of state laws, local laws, and national laws. There are paid leave laws and unpaid leave laws. There is leave that can be used for short-term sick time and longer-term family and medical leave. There is the national Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, but there are also pregnancy accommodations laws in 30 states that can sometimes offer additional protection. 

To help people navigate that maze, the first step for us is to listen. A Better Balance’s helpline provides customized assistance to workers who call us and supports them in identifying what laws can help them in their specific situation. 

That’s how we helped people like Shanea and Stephanie. Shanea, a daycare teacher from Tennessee, reached out to our helpline when she was 22 weeks pregnant. Her doctor advised her to lift no more than 10 pounds to protect the health of her pregnancy. 

After Shanea informed her employer of this temporary, medically advised lifting restriction, the company told her she must resign from her position and reapply after her baby is born. Because of A Better Balance, Shanea learned about her rights under the federal Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which makes it illegal for an employer with 15 or more employees to force pregnant workers off the job if it is possible to reasonably accommodate them. When Shanea provided this information to her company, she was able to return to work the next day. 

Stephanie, a dental assistant from Michigan, called us after she had gone without pay during an illness. We told her about her rights under Michigan’s Earned Sick Time Act. She raised it with her employer, and he paid her the sick time she was owed.

Legalese, Simplified

Complex legal language can be a barrier to entry: A right a worker cannot understand is a right they often cannot exercise. 

Our Know Your Rights work translates dense statutes and regulations into tools people can actually act on, including our Workplace Rights Hub, which provides a state-by-state summary, organized by scenario. In addition, we create plain-language explainers and FAQs on various national, state, and local leave and accommodation laws. We also have sample letters specific to the federal Pregnant Workers Fairness Act and digestible social media graphics available. These specialized resources can be distributed more widely and allow us to have a broader reach beyond our helpline. 

That transfer of knowledge changes the power dynamic at work. A worker no longer has to wait for an institution to act on their behalf. They become the first line of enforcement, asserting their own rights on the job.

Two Ways to Measure Success

We measure success quantitatively and qualitatively. Last year, our Know Your Rights resources received over 100,000 unique visitors on our website. We reached hundreds of thousands more individuals via social media. And we have directly supported thousands and thousands of workers through our helpline. What we hear on the helpline shapes our advocacy and litigation, so that frontline experience feeds back into everything we do. 

Since its founding, A Better Balance has championed and helped inform paid sick time laws in 19 states, paid family and medical leave laws in 15 states, pregnancy accommodations laws in 27 states, and two federal laws, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act and PUMP for Nursing Mothers Act. 

We’re seeing workers’ demands gaining traction around the country. Recent milestones include the passage of paid family and medical leave in Colorado by voters via ballot initiative in 2020, which grew in 2025 to include additional weeks of paid leave for parents of babies in the NICU; the passage of the federal Pregnant Workers Fairness Act in late 2022 after a 10-year campaign; and the passage of paid family and medical leave and paid sick time in Virginia this spring, making Virginia the first Southern state to enact paid leave. In 2025 and 2026 alone, 15 new laws that provide economic empowerment for working families were passed because of this growing momentum. 

Every one of those laws started as a gap someone like Luna, Shanea, or Stephanie fell into. Bridging these gaps, one state and one worker at a time, is how we understand what it means to build a democracy people can trust—not because it’s written down, but because it shows up for them when they need it most.

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