California's Paid Family Leave (PFL) insurance program, which is also known as the Family Temporary Disability Insurance (FTDI) program, is a law enacted in 2002 that extends unemployment disability compensation to cover individuals who take time off work to care for a seriously ill family member or bond with a new minor child. If eligible, you can receive benefit payments for up to eight weeks. Payments are about 60 to 70 percent of your weekly wages earned 5 to 18 months before your claim start date. You will receive payments by debit card or check. Benefits equal approximately 70% of earnings and have a maximum per week, for a total of up to six weeks. The Paid Family Leave program is administered by the State Disability Insurance (SDI) program of the Employment Development Department. Benefits commenced on July 1, 2004. The PFL insurance program is fully funded by employees' contributions, similar to the SDI program. The statute states that PFL must be taken concurrently with leave under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and the California Family Rights Act (CFRA), both of which provide for twelve weeks of unpaid leave in a twelve-month period. In other words, the FMLA and CFRA offer job protection for up to twelve weeks of family leave whereas PFL offers compensation for up to eight weeks. History In 2002, after an extended campaign by the California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO and the California Work & Family Coalition led at the time by the Labor Project for Working Families, California was the first state to pass a law requiring the Paid Family Leave program. As of mid-2008, the only other states that had passed laws to offer paid family leave benefits were Washington and New Jersey. In 2009, five years after California's paid family leave law first went into effect, Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey, a Democrat from the same state, introduced H.R. 2339, the Family Income Responding to Significant Transitions (FIRST) Act, which would provide federal grants to states with existing paid family leave laws to implement and administer their paid family leave programs, and would encourage other states to develop their own paid family leave programs. Provisions In order to qualify for PFL, employees must participate in the State Disability Insurance (SDI) Program (or a voluntary plan in lieu of SDI). Benefits under the program include the following: PFL allows for up to six weeks