A network of Bay Staters who lost their loved ones to homicide urged lawmakers last Thursday (Nov. 21) to pass a bill requiring employers to provide bereavement leave and to prioritize funding for victim and survivor services.

Advocates and lawmakers gathered to recognize Survivors of Homicide Victims Awareness Month, which runs from Nov. 20 through Dec. 20. Timed to offer support around the holiday season, the month promotes education, advocacy, and “peace-building” efforts among survivors, according to the Dorchester-based nonprofit Louis D. Brown Peace Institute.

“This is a time to reflect upon the lives of our loved ones and to honor the peacemaking efforts of survivors,” Alexandra Dorrelus, co-executive director of the institute, said ahead of emotional remarks from mothers who lost their sons to violence. “We’re not just remembering – we’re impacting policy for sustainable change, and we’re centering healing as a basic human right.”

Massachusetts employers for now have discretion over whether to give their employees time off to grieve.

The patchwork of policies can create disparities between higher-paid workers with comprehensive benefits and those in working-class, blue-collar positions, said Pace McConkie Jr., policy and advocacy manager at the institute. Workers without bereavement leave may lose their jobs as they struggle to cope with a family death, with that impact disproportionately felt among Black and Brown communities, he said.

Bill S 2562 entitling workers to up to 10 business days of bereavement leave, which employers can choose to make paid or unpaid, has been lodged in the Senate Ways and Means Committee since Jan. 22.

“It may not pass this year, but we’ll be filing it again next year and building on the progress that we’ve done,” McConkie said. “This is the first legislative session where a community organization like the Peace Institute is really championing it from a community perspective, and it’s the furthest the bill has ever gotten.”

The Labor and Workforce Development Committee gave the bill a favorable report in January, but the legislation can’t emerge for votes in the House and Senate until it makes it through other committees. 

Bereavement leave would cover workers who have lost a “family member,” which the bill defines as a child, parent, guardian, sibling, spouse or “person in a substantive dating or engagement relationship with an employee and who resides with that employee.”

Asked whether Senate Ways and Means intends to bring the legislation to the floor this session, a spokesman for Chair Mike Rodrigues said committee staff is “actively reviewing the bill. The chair stands with all survivors of homicide victims and their families,” Sean Fitzgerald said.

Ahead of advocates visiting lawmakers’ offices, Liam Lowney, executive director of the Massachusetts Office for Victim Assistance, encouraged them to seek more state money for victim and survivor programs. The Legislature committed $60 million over the last three years to fill gaps caused by federal cuts.

“We’re looking at so many other avenues to try to bring funding in because the picture is really, really grim right now for victim service programs across the state,” Lowney said. “If we don’t secure more funding, whether it’s from the Legislature or someplace else, there’s likely to be about a 40 percent drop-off in funding available in FY ‘27 (and) 10 percent drop-off in FY ‘26.”