If you're going to use a pop up canopy, consider skipping the stakes and instead use sandbags or five gallon buckets full of rocks or concrete. When we use them at work, we always sandbag the canopies down, and that's not even in the gorge.

>are they charging you for the benefit of paid leave now?

I couldn't find anything that said when payments started, so I looked at my paystub and, yes, at least I'm being charged now. A quick look at the math shows me getting hit for 0.58% of my check, so for a $1000 check, I'd get charged $5.80.

>If I exhaust those, my private short term leave insurance kicks in which is much, much cheaper than the tax they are imposing for this benefit.

While I was digging for the payment info, I came across info on Voluntary Plans. Quick version is that an employer has to provide something equivalent to PFML. If they want to opt out of the government plan, they have to submit their own equivalent plan and have that approved. If it doesn't do the same job as PFML, it, at least should, be denied. At the end of the day, this comes down to having your employer look in to it. Now, as per my grandmother raping comment, I don't trust a business to lift one finger that it doesn't have to, regardless of how much it would save their workers. But I've been wrong before. Maybe ask your payroll, HR department, or union shop steward if there are any plans to opt out of the plan. If they won't... well look at it like this. It's not terribly expensive, and you're covered a bit more if absolutely everything goes down the toilet.

Is the question "Can I not use PFML time off for my surgery?" or "Can I not pay taxes into PFML?"

To not claim the time off, I'm pretty sure the answer is yes. You have to file for Paid Leave, so you could just not file. How you handle your finances at that point is up to you.

To not pay the PFML premium... probably not. You've only got two ways around it. You can convince the company that employs you to cover the cost as a benefit, and 99.9% of employers would rape their own grandmothers on national TV if they thought it reduce their quarterly losses. If you think you can negotiate this new benefit, good luck. Option two is to quit and work as a self-employed contractor or some other means of self-employ. If you're self-employed, you have the option to not pay in. That means you don't get to claim Paid Leave down the road if you need it, though.