![\"Disabled](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-1301093461.jpg\" "\\"Op-Ed")
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Disabled woman with bandaged arm signing document<\/p>\n
If you lose your job in New York, you can receive unemployment insurance payments of up to $869 per week. If a family member needs care, Paid Family Leave can provide up to $1,230 per week. But if you are injured outside of work \u2014 hit by a car, struck down by illness, suddenly unable to work through no fault of your own \u2014 the maximum benefit is just $170 a week. That figure has not been updated since 1989.<\/p>\n
Small businesses know\u00a0what it looks like when that inadequacy becomes someone\u2019s reality.\u00a0Uncommon Goods is based in Brooklyn, employing\u00a0about 140 year-round workers and around 1,000 during the peak holiday season. On Christmas Eve 2025, one Uncommon Goods warehouse team member was hit by a car on his way to work. He is lucky to be alive. He sustained a shattered pelvis, has undergone multiple surgeries, and remains hospitalized. Since his injury, Uncommon Goods has done what we can to support him financially \u2014 because $170 a week is not support. It is an insult to someone who has given years of honest work.<\/p>\n
His situation made something abstract suddenly concrete: New York\u2019s Temporary Disability Insurance program is broken, and the people it fails most are the ones who can least afford it.\n<\/p>\n
The fix is straightforward. Workers who need time off to recover from their own illness or injury should receive the same wage replacement as those who take Paid Family Leave to care for a loved one \u2013 it is only fair.\u00a0 It is not a windfall. It is the bare minimum for a worker who cannot earn a paycheck through no fault of their own. And the cost to small businesses would be minimal \u2014 fully funded by small contributions from employers and employees.<\/p>\n
Small businesses\u00a0support this update because it is the right thing to do.\u00a0 It would also be good for business. Research consistently shows that robust paid leave programs improve employee engagement, morale, and loyalty. And when workers feel financially pressured to return before they are ready \u2014 or to work through illness they cannot afford to acknowledge \u2014 it costs companies, and society, more in the long run than any benefit contribution ever would.<\/p>\n
New York considered legislation in 2025 that would make exactly this update.\u00a0 It did not pass.\u00a0\u00a0In 2026, the Governor and the legislature have another chance to make this change.\u00a0 The math is not complicated. The need is not abstract. The cost is manageable. What is missing is simply the will to act.<\/p>\n
Uncommon Goods\u2019\u00a0team member is still in the hospital. He is not thinking about legislation or benefit formulas. He is thinking about his recovery, his future and whether he will be okay. The least New York can do is to make sure that when the next person finds themselves in this position, the state\u2019s answer is something better than $170 a week.<\/p>\n
Dave Bolotsky is the founder of Uncommon Goods in Brooklyn and one of the 85,000 small business owners in Small Business Majority\u2019s network.\u00a0Randy Peers is President & CEO of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Disabled woman with bandaged arm signing document If you lose your job in New York, you can receive…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":185538,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[31735,9,11,10,2584,299,74615],"class_list":{"0":"post-185537","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-medical-leave","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-headlines","11":"tag-new-york-news","12":"tag-op-ed","13":"tag-opinion","14":"tag-paid-medical-leave"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185537\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/185538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}