
Attitudes Shift on Paid Leave: Dads Sue, Too - petethomas
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/16/business/attitudes-shift-on-paid-leave-dads-sue-too.html
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cryoshon
"In his complaint, Mr. Ayanna cited a “macho” culture that “encourages male
associates and partners to fulfill the stereotypical male role of ceding
family responsibilities to women.”"

Ah yes, the good old macho culture that has been disfiguring men emotionally
and physically for longer than I know. The macho culture is probably one
reason why we don't live as long as women do, since we consider going to the
doctor to be expressing weakness, which is verboten. Aside from that aspect of
the issue, it's no secret that worker rights barely exist in the US, and a
strong parental leave policy enshrined into law would massively help both men
and women.

Getting real worker rights in the US be like pulling teeth from a stone (sic),
though. We don't even have sick days by law-- seems like those should come
first.

A quick list of things we direly need which we don't have:

1\. Paid sick days

2\. Paid vacation days

3\. Hard limit of hours worked per week

4\. Overtime pay for salaried employees

5\. Paid parental leave

6\. Control over scheduling of hours

7\. A realistic minimum wage or some other way of guaranteeing survival of the
poor

8\. Paid childcare

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mc32
I think a "living wage" is a somewhat ill defined, but also overly political
concept for several reasons. One, what does it mean? Does it mean allowing you
to get by at a minimum level, or, does that mean allowing you to have an upper
lower class income?

Also if we mean it to allow upper lower class to lower middle class, then we
could see consequences such as: people not caring about education and higher
skills development (blue collar union job mentality) no big deal by yet could
strand these people later. Second, it pushes lower skilled people out of the
labor force. Why hire someone who barely went to highschool when you can get a
liberal arts grad at that wage?

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paulmd
Those two consequences you predict are entirely contradictory. Less educated
people will be pushed out of the workforce, but for some reason people will
also disregard education that would increase their employability? Say what?

Living wage does have a specific definition - it is a minimum subsistence
wage, that takes into account the cost of living for a various area as well as
various things that are necessary to be able to work (eg child care,
transportation, and medical coverage). It does not budget time or money for
any entertainment or leisure time, or any long-term financial planning such as
retirement or savings.

So in short it's a minimum wage, except a minimum wage that's actually based
on the immediate day-to-day costs needed to keep you working at your job. In
fact it's really less political than the minimum wage itself, since the
minimum wage is just an arbitrary number someone chose - one that's usually
low enough to require the government to subsidize businesses who employ
minimum-wage workers, through various social programs. Why is the minimum wage
currently $7.25 instead of the $15 equivalent it was in the 70s? We simply
haven't legislated an increase.

Can you change what costs are considered essential to keeping you working?
Sure, and those do change over time. 70 years ago you wouldn't have had to
include child-care costs since you'd have a stay-at-home wife to care for
them. And indeed such things _should_ change when justified by conditions on
the ground - we no longer live in an economy of 1-income households, and it's
not just foolish to pretend we do - it's harmful.

I assure you that Americans demonstrate _ample_ resistance to perceived
increases in the living standards of the poor, it's unnecessary to
preemptively rule out any changes down the road.

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mc32
I agree with regard to inflation. That should be taken into consideration.

I don't see the contradiction. Today, if we move min wage to 20, undereducated
people will get pushed out by people with two years of coll.

In the long term, if we increase min wage to make it a livable wage by which
you can raise a family, what would motivate a 16 yo to further studies and
become the two year comm cool grad? I grew up with disaffected youth. These
are the guys and gals who thought, I dont need much, I'll get a job at Joe's
dad's shop. College ain't for me.

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foldor
Am I the only one disgusted that women were only being given 10 weeks (Now
reduced to 6, with 6 additional weeks for medical reasons) in the first place?
This is one of the many workers rights areas that the US is far behind the
rest of the modern world.

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legohead
What's more disgusting is the US has no law regarding paid parental leave[1].
Nearly every other country in the world does. If your company is giving you
paid parental leave in the US, it's actually a nice benefit!

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave)

~~~
dragonwriter
> What's more disgusting is the US has no law regarding paid parental
> leave[1]. Nearly every other country in the world does. If your company is
> giving you paid parental leave in the US, it's actually a nice benefit!

This is somewhat true, and somewhat misleading: the US national government has
a more limited role than many other national governments, with much that would
be done by national governments in other nations being done by state
governments in the US. Several US States -- perhaps most relevant to HN, given
the tech industry focus, California is among them -- do have paid parental
leave requirements (whether its directly employer paid or paid through
disability insurance.)

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herge
Quebec has one of the best parental leave policies in North America, and it's
all payed for by the government's unemployment payroll taxes, so there is
little cost to companies (other than hiring a replacement). You basically get
a full calendar year shared between the mother and the dad as you see fit at
70% of your salary.

It has made having a child a lot easier, especially for young professionals.

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neap24
That sounds wonderful...but does that mean if you have three children in a row
you get three years off work and get paid for it? If so, that seems like it
could be difficult for companies to work around.

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smartt
True, but this is an edge case that is unlikely given the toll that pregnancy
takes on a woman's body and the challenges for the family. If you have kids,
can you honestly say that you think this would be a good thing to try?

Another issue is where the parental-leave financial support comes from. Should
it be the company's responsibility, or is this a government initiative to
invest in the health of its citizens? Would you support the idea if the
company had zero financial responsibility for the paid-leave (and only had to
bring the parents back on once leave is over?)

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masterleep
Just what the economy needs: additional legal risk and associated expense for
employing people.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Whether you like it or not, the US economy is going to get first-world worker
protections, even if it needs to be dragged kicking and screaming (GDP be
damned).

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pnut
Kicking and screaming is the only way US business forfeits anything. We fought
a civil war over slavery, for god's sake.

