Not getting paid maternity/paternity leave unless you work in very specific sectors of the federal government.
Why does this complaint prevail? I get that not all companies offer parental leave, and it’s not government supported like if some other countries, but I have had full-time employment since 2000 and every company I’ve been at offered several (4-12) weeks of maternity leave and at least a week of paternity. Since 2018 or so every company has also started offering more, 2-4 weeks, paternity. And I live in a state that kind of sucks when it comes to worker’s rights.
Either my experience is rather rare, or this complaint is overblown, or people mean something different when they talk about parental leave such as a government sponsored program. Or is there something else I’m not considering?
“I haven’t been on minimum wage for a quarter of a century, so I really don’t understand why people are making such a fuss about it.”
US ranked among worst countries to raise a family, study says
Pay rate and parental leave are very different things though. I didn’t say I hadn’t been on minimum wage, I said I’ve been in full time employment. A significant portion of that time was at it barely above minimum wage of the time and lower than my states minimum wage is today. I’m asking about parental leave, not wages.
Pay rate and parental leave are very different things though
In this context, no, they’re both labour protection laws. Do you know why minimum wage exists? Because without it, most bosses would pay even less.
Perhaps you’ve been lucky and been in jobs in which you’ve gotten above the minimum. Which should be expected after working for more than two decades. Why would you think that matters? Do you not think that every mother (and actually parent in general) should have the right to have paid leave for months? So that only the rich with free time get to procreate and anyone working a menial job literally can’t if they want to make rent ?
I hope you realise that most companies do the bare legally required minimum and a lot don’t even do that, breaking the (already weak) labour laws the US has, and usually without consequence.
4-12 weeks of maternity leave is depressingly low. 2-4 weeks of paternity is insultingly low.
People should be given a year. Paid. It’s really impactful for the child and family.
Is that really what the complaint is? Not that we don’t have it, but that what we have is pathetically low? I agree that 6 months to a year would be far better, but it’s inaccurate to say we get none when it seems that most companies do offer it.
The US literally has no mandated paid maternal leave, let alone paid paternal leave.
The U.S. is the only OECD member country—and one of only six countries in the world—without a national paid parental leave policy. The U.S. is also one of the few high-income countries without a national family caregiving or medical leave policy.
Do you not see how shit the situation is in the US compared to the norm in the developed world?
You also have to burn your sick/vacation days for it too most of the time if you plan on getting paid. So, if you require time off to care for your newborn afterward, good luck. We won’t even get started on how much child care costs once your CEO decides WFH is not viable. Bottom line, we dint care about you and your baby.
This is just my experience at maybe ten companies, but it was always paid, not using PTO. It was only if you wanted to use more than the allotted time you’d need to start using PTO. Childcare is a whole different level of insane expense that really should be subsidized. When I was too young to consider children, I worked at a call center that had an on site preschool, but that phased out pretty shortly after I started as a cost cutting measure. Nothing has gotten anything but more difficult when it comes to raising kids.
Retail and restaurants are unlikely to give you 4-12 weeks of even unpaid time off. No way would they pay anyone for that much time off unless they were forced to. Not saying this to defend them, but restaurant margins can’t absorb that kind of cost unless it’s a large non-franchised chain.
What do you think about the system in Mexico? I’m not an expert, just saw in some paperwork that everyone pays a maternity tax, like social security, which makes it seem that maternity leave is a government program. We’d need to get our shit together as a country first as the GOP crowd would immediately want it defunded, but it seems like a better use of tax dollars than weapons of war.
I think that may be similar to what we have in Washington state. All employees pay something like $2 from each paycheck into the FMLA program and you can use it for maternity leave as well as other family health emergencies. It’s a state program so I don’t think the employer has to pay anything. I don’t know how many other states have programs like this but it would be nice if there was a federal one.
Thanks for helping me try to understand with such an insightful response.
You’re not wrong dude my bad, I deleted that bullshit. I was cunty because I’m having a shit day.