So how do you feel about paid parental leave?

Great Debates
101

There has been a few question about how this works in other countries. This is how it works in Norway:

The total parental leave is 47 weeks at 100 % pay, or 57 weeks at 80%. 10 weeks are earmarked for each parent, the remaining 27-37 weeks can be allocated as the parents wish.

While you are on leave, your pay is being paid by the government, not your employer.

Your employer will normally replace you with someone on a time-limited contract. In Norway, there are a lot of legal protections for workers, and this means the hiring process is very conservative. It is inordinately hard to get your first job after graduation. However, time-limited positions to cover for maternity leave is less of a risk for employers, and it is traditionally how you get your first job and references. Since the replacement is normally brand new, they’ll cost less in terms of wages.

The manager should have had a few months to prepare before the pregnant worker goes out on leave. Any manager who has a problem ensuring a smooth transition with months to prepare should not be a manager. This is an essential area of competence.

As an investment, this is generally considered to yield gigantic returns financially.

Making it easier to have kids and return to the workforce ensurers that more women do return to the workforce and spend a few more decades as taxpayers, being massive assets. Growing up with employed parents who go to work every day makes it far more likely the kid will become a productive asset. (taxpayer).

Now, I made a back-of-the-envelope calculation on how much this is worth to us. Personal taxation is about 35 % of the government budget. Female employment is 74 %. In the US it is 62 %, so we are 12 % over. Thats an extra 6 % of the total labor force, and so represents 2 % of the budget.

In the US budget, a similar added income would be about 165 billion $, more than the yearly costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

102

It is illegal for an employer to allow a woman to return to work before two (or four) weeks after the birth of her baby.

103

If costs are the objection then I agree it’s a fair complaint. Reducing defense spending by $50B would fund a lot of social programs. I would rather just cut $50B and not spend it on anything at all myself.

Which country has the highest GDP? Oh yeah, the U.S. Not that paid parental leave is the reason even remotely but this is a weak criticism.

Northern Piper, how do you reconcile these two statements? I’m not familiar with Canadian employment law but it seems like you are saying simultaneously that the employer is mandated to contribute to an Employment Insurance fund and that paid leave is no cost to the employer.

Same thing in the US. Do you honestly believe that this is enforced regularly as a proportion of the time that it happens? I don’t. If you have two equally qualified candidates for a position, and the only thing differentiating them is that one is a 28ish female and the other is a 28ish male, which one would you pick as an employer?

From memory (some may be slightly off): In CA you get FMLA. This only guarantees employment, not pay. Women can get disability which is paid, up to 12 weeks. Men can take Paid Family Leave (PFL) which is paid, up to 12 weeks over a 52 week period. The pay rate is based on the highest of your last 4 quarters of earnings. It is a percent of that amount, but is capped. The cap is reached I believe if you earn something like, $50K/year. In the Bay Area, that is less than entry level for a useful college degree.

104

That’s a cute quip, but doesn’t it go a step too far?

My parents didn’t get paid parental leave when I was an infant – and I, in turn, didn’t get paid parental leave when my child was born; my employer paid me for actually showing up at work to do my job, just like you’d maybe expect, and so I waited until I could afford to have a kid, just like my parents did before me.

So if someone asks me for a parental-leave handout for to have a kid, why can’t I just say, what, on the off-chance that your kid will grow up to be a productive member of society, even though we’re really just rolling the dice here and that kid’s only future impact on my wallet may well be when he someday asks me for a handout too? Yeah, how about I get a pass since me and my folks saved up our money instead of getting paid parental leave? And how about you maybe try that too?

105

In other words, no change of any sort should ever be implemented, because it’s unfair to the people who were around before the change.

106

There’s three European countries with a higher GDP per capita than the US, all of whom have paid maternity leave. Similarly, taken together, the European Union as a whole has a larger GDP than the US.

107

Perhaps it’s because Europeans are used to longer vacations and more leave than Americans are (thus they have the systems for staffing for this, as well the expectation in their work force that this is the way it has always been and should be), and so trying to compare what happens in Europe and what happens in the US wrt extra paid parental leave is apples to oranges. I know it’s an article of faith around here that the US should be able to do things exactly like they do in Europe and that it’s just stupid ‘conservatives’ who think otherwise, but there are a lot of key differences in attitude that you can’t just handwave away. We aren’t really all that much alike in a lot of things, even though most Americans ancestors came from Europe. And, of course, ‘Europe’ isn’t exactly in total lockstep on all of this either, since it varies from country to country.

I’m glad it works for them and they like their system. I think that if we are talking about advancing leave in the US that this shouldn’t be a major issue. If we are talking about adopting a European system (or Canadian or any other countries) then I think you are going to run into more issues, especially initially. Consider it this way…how well would Germany and the German people adapt to going with our system? Let’s not get into which is better, let’s just say you were going to impose the US work and compensation on Germany. How do you expect they would react? Well, that’s going to be similar to how the average American worker would react to something like this…and this leaves aside how you’d get it paid for with our current structure.

108

As someone who really dislikes staying home and is got very antsy during my 10 weeks of maternity leave, I will say that 6 weeks is basically a medical minimum, not really optional “bonding” time.

Newborns wake up and need 15-45 minutes of attention approximately every 2 hours for those first weeks, and no human can stay functional with that level of sleep disruption. The only people coming back much earlier than 6 weeks are the handful that can afford night nurses.

109

Only to the extent that it nullifies your you-were-once-a-kid argument. Take that off the table and we can better discuss the fairness of this proposed change.

110

I think there should be paid family leave. For many jobs, it would be massively beneficial. The parents get to spend more time with their new baby. There is less financial strain so it helps keep families more stable. Stable families raise children more likely to succeed in life, which helps everybody.

What do the child free employees get? Overtime. I know a few child free people who would love the extra overtime. These are folks already supplementing their full time jobs with an additional part time job simply because job A doesn’t pay quite enough, but is stable. Getting overtime is a more cost effective use of their time than juggling multiple jobs. The child free person thus has their own advantage- they have more flexibility with time. Combined with some jobs which allow you to convert overtime into vacation/ sick time, the people who choose not to start a family get a potential benefit out of this.

Some women taking maternity leave simply quit their jobs at some point along the way. If their leave was unpaid, they may not have an incentive to go back. But if they had to be paid through it as they do in most countries, then they are more likely to return. I feel this benefits both them and their employer.

I’ve never felt resentment toward other women that take leave for their families. I’ve been saddened when some work friends decide to just quit instead of coming back to work later. And I never minded the overtime I got from covering their shifts; my job like many other high $ hourly jobs allows me to nearly double my income from just overtime alone. If it weren’t for co workers getting knocked up, my pay would be lower, which might have me take my job skills elsewhere.

111

Those of us who work on salary do not get overtime pay.

112

[Quote=Bone]

[Quote=Northern Piper]

as mentioned above, it depends how the system is set up. In the Canadian system, the employee on leave is paid from the EI fund, not the employer, so that’s not a cost to the employer.
[/quote]

Northern Piper, how do you reconcile these two statements? I’m not familiar with Canadian employment law but it seems like you are saying simultaneously that the employer is mandated to contribute to an Employment Insurance fund and that paid leave is no cost to the employer.
[/quote]

I was responding to two different inquiries: first, how is the system to be funded? will it come out of general tax revenues? In Canada, the answer is no. Each pay period, the employee and the employer make matching contributions to the EI fund, as a percentage of the employee’s salary. Those contributions pay for all types of EI benefits, not just parental leave. Yes, that is a cost to the employer.

The second post was in response to questions from posters whether the employer would have to pay the salary of the employee on parental leave, and the salary of the replacement employee. The answer to that question, in Canada, is “no.” When the employee goes on leave, the employer does not have to pay the employee anything and does not have to make any additional contributions to the EI fund on the employee’s behalf. The employee’s parental leave benefits are paid out of the EI fund, just like any other employment insurance claim. If the employer hires a temporary worker to replace the employee on leave, the employer pays that worker’s salary, but it would be an odd case indeed where a temporary worker got paid more than the salaried worker on parental leave, so that is likely a small financial savings for the employer.

[Quote=Bone]

[Quote=Northern Piper]

That’s what human rights laws are for. If an employer discriminates in hiring on the basis of sex, they’re liable to pay compensation to individuals who were not hired as a result.
[/quote]

Same thing in the US. Do you honestly believe that this is enforced regularly as a proportion of the time that it happens? I don’t. If you have two equally qualified candidates for a position, and the only thing differentiating them is that one is a 28ish female and the other is a 28ish male, which one would you pick as an employer?
[/quote]

I would pick the one who best meets the job description, because I would follow the law.

Yes, I do believe that claims based on pregnancy and sex discrimination are brought on a regular basis, because I’ve read the annual reports of human rights commissions in Canada which show that. I’ve also read HR bulletins that remind employers of their duty to obey the law, and the consequences that can follow from a breach of that duty, including public findings by the courts that the employer is a discriminatory employer. That’s in addition to the damages that an employer would have to pay to an employee or applicant who has been discriminated against.

The argument that we shouldn’t bring in a change because employers will break the law is not sound public policy.

113

Their husbands certainly think they don’t. :mad:

114

Vacation, not parental leave. My son-in-law got yelled at for falling behind on his vacation.
I don’t think parental leave is mandatory there, but I don’t know for sure. But since people take a lot of time off, hiring replacements is going to be more prevalent than here when it is pretty much a slightly long vacation, if that.

115

My point was that the employer has *already *paid for the employee on leave - via contributions to the EI fund. The idea that the employer is not paying for both the employee on parental leave and the temp worker is not accurate, based on your description.

They are exactly the same qualifications, in this hypothetical.

The argument isn’t that we shouldn’t change because people will circumvent the law - it’s that the law can have unintended consequences that could outstrip the benefits.
In any event, my general opinion is that if a person can’t afford to have kids without forcing someone else to pay, they shouldn’t have kids.

116

An employer who for some reason has lots of new mothers on staff is probably not fully paying for all of them. An employer who has mostly older men is paying more than the few new parents get. That’s called insurance.

117

This certainly sounds like a reasonable opinion on the surface, but the problem is you have to take the next logical step. You see, the problem with people is that they aren’t always going to do what they “should” do. People are going to get pregnant sometimes when they aren’t wealthy enough to just quit their job, or hire a full time nanny, and there’s nothing that can be done to prevent this from happening, unless you are in favor of forced abortions for any women that can’t prove that she has sufficient savings that she’ll never need any help from any social programs whatsoever. If you are not for forced abortions in these cases, then the reality is that there will be a child, an American citizen child, that will suffer the consequences. So now the choice is, society helps out, or fuck that kid then. I think the best way for society to be is the former solution, your viewpoint necessitates the latter.

118

Given that the tax rate and maximum premium paid by the employer for EI did not go up (and in fact went down) after the paid leave benefit went from 6 months to one year in Dec 2000, an argument can be made that the amount paid into the EI fund would not be substantially different if there were no parental leave benefits.

119

I just thought of something: if some people are genuinely concerned about “fairness” for people without children, what if they were afforded an opportunity to take paid leave for a similar purpose?

I’m thinking about someone who has no children, but would like to take six weeks to volunteer in a capacity where they are on the job 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to care for the health, feeding, and hygiene of people who are unable to take care of themselves. For example, becoming a live-in orderly at a hospice or similar institution. No vacation days, no time off: just subordinating one’s own life for a while to being totally on-call for another person’s needs.

If someone wanted to take a month and a half every few years to totally devote their life to enfeebled people, perhaps society should make accommodations for that, on the basis that it is a similar duty that parents must perform in the early weeks of an infant’s life.

Sound fair?

120

No, it empowers mothers. Not all women are mothers or remotely desire to be. I have no problem with the idea of providing Family or Lifestyle leave that an invested employee could use to take time off for family or lifestyle issues including pregnancy or caring for an elderly relative or just a mental health vacation, but tying it to breeding is grossly unfair. It really doesn’t empower women. It gives a prospective employer one more reason not to hire a qualified female applicant.