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.