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NAWBO Agenda Promotes Reforms To Benefit
Small Business
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Business New Haven
3/23/1998
By: Jennifer M. Gangloff
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BNH intereviewed Paddi LeShane about legislative issues affecting Connecticut women-owned businesses. LeShane is a partner in the Hartford lobbying firm Sullivan & LeShane Inc. and co-chair of the public policy committee of the Connecticut chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO), which is pushing for legislative reforms for small businesses, including those owned by females.
Are female business owners
today still at a disadvantage?
People perceive that the 'old boy network is still a problem, that there are isolated cases. For me personally, I didn't perceive a glass ceiling because I was a female. I know there are people who think there is a lack of accessibility to the normal business ladder. But maybe sometimes that occurs because of a lack of a network of strong supporters out there - women who aren't positioned and who don't have a solid group of male and female business colleagues they can go to for their advice and experience. If you're out there on your own duking it out, no matter what gender you are, you're going to feel there's a barrier there.
Where does NAWBO stand on the part-time workers bill?
We have a big problem with the economic implications of a bill that would require employers to treat part-time and seasonal employees like full-time employees for benefits packages. Because a lot of women business owners own small businesses, a lot of them use flex-time or part-time employees. One of our members “leases” flight attendants to other companies. Those employees want a balanced lifestyle and don't want to work seven or eight days in a row; they're in a part-time situation. This bill would require this woman to treat her employees as full-time. That means she either has to scale back the number of employees she has or find new clients immediately upon passage of this bill to balance off the excess expenditure.
What other legislation does NAWBO consider a priority?
There's a bill we are backing that would allow small-business owners to purchase health insurance through the state health plan. There are some fears out there that if this went forward, the commercial insurance carriers would lose a significant part of their business. I think, in reality, that if they wanted a competitive marketplace, they now would [have one]. Again, women business owners tend to have smaller companies, and if you could get your health insurance at more affordable rates, then you can provide employees with competitive benefits, which is especially important with today's low unemployment rate.
Why does NAWBO support the
job training bill?
The workforce is shrinking as far as the availability of qualified individuals. This bill would remove the sales tax for job training. That's a hot issue because a lot of employees hired by small businesses are technical employees. Small businesses also tend to want to have people stay long-term. So it's important to continue to train these employees and allow them to beef up their skills. This bill is a nice way to encourage job training and to use local resources as the training ground.
NAWBO doesn't seem to have a women-only agenda.
It wasn't a goal of NAWBO to do that. One of the things NAWBO really focuses in on is that most women in Connecticut own smaller companies, so that most of the issues are generic small-business issues that concern women and men. They don't necessarily have different public-policy implications than any small business, but there might be management differences and cultural differences within companies owned by women. But the public policy affects us all the same.
For more information about NAWBO, call 860-722-1989 or call Sue Glasspiegel, president of the Connecticut chapter, at 860-651-5299.
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