“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.
So in this context what’s really being said is not that there is no parental leave, but that there is no workers protection of parental leave. Thinking of it this way helps. I wish this was more explicitly stated as I tend to be too literal about things.