Critics – including…the National Partnership for Women and Families – complain that despite Republican claims to the contrary the measure lacks adequate enforcement.

Judith Lichtman, senior adviser to the National Partnership for Women and Families, argued the public sector’s option was created in 1985 to save federal, state and local governments money, not to offer workers more flexibility. Most private-sector workers, she added, lack the union and civil service protections that give government employees leverage in the arrangement.

Judith L. Lichtman, the organization’s senior advisor, testified against the bill before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, saying, “it would leave workers with neither pay nor time” and “magnifies the power imbalance between employer and employee.”

By broader U.S. standards, though, Yahoo is in an elite group, said Vicki Shabo, director of work and family programs at the National Partnership for Women & Families in Washington. Only 11 percent of private-sector workers have access to paid family leave, she said.