
How My Employer Put the “FML” in FMLA - vkb
http://the-toast.net/2014/10/27/employer-put-fml-fmla/
======
minimax
_At this point, the male students would nod and go on about their days, and
the female grad students would stick around in an increasingly panicked state
to ask about that whole saving annual and sick leave thing, since their
contracts don’t include leave._

I was 100% like the male students until fairly recently when my girlfriend and
I started having serious conversations about having children. The conversation
was something like this. her: "What does your employer offer for maternity
leave?" me: "lol idk." And then I got a pretty stern look. In the US the only
legal guarantee you get is that you can leave for 12 weeks unpaid and you'll
probably still have a job when you get back. There is zero guaranteed paid
leave. It's completely shameful and it's a stone age policy compared to the
rest of the Western world [1]. It's also something I think the typical HN
reader hasn't spent much time thinking about so I'm glad to see this on the
front page.

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

~~~
cdoxsey
> In the US the only legal guarantee you get is that you can leave for 12
> weeks unpaid and you'll probably still have a job when you get back.

(1) Most companies provide better benefits than what is legally required (2)
The US has a robust and very expensive welfare system (3) Unlike something
like cancer pregnancy is not an accident. If you can't afford to pay for
children, don't have them.

FWIW most tech companies provide very generous benefits, though I'm pretty
sure it's only possible because a lot of employees never take advantage of
them. (Most programmers aren't having a dozen kids)

~~~
bronbron
> Most companies provide better benefits than what is legally required

Cool, let's just bank on the generosity of companies.

> Unlike something like cancer pregnancy is not an accident. If you can't
> afford to pay for children, don't have them.

Did you even read the article? These people can obviously afford to have
children. They can't afford to become unemployed because they had children.
Short of being independently wealthy or raiding your personal savings, no one
can afford to become unemployed for an extended period of time because they're
raising a child.

Let's not even get into the fact that this is obviously disproportionately
affecting women. I don't need to take sick leave because my wife gave birth -
I don't have anything to physically recover from.

~~~
jamoes
> Cool, let's just bank on the generosity of companies.

Or, how about you think about this when finding a job, and weigh the pros and
cons of various employers' benefits and policies. We don't always need top-
down guidance from bureaucrats in D.C. to solve societal problems.

~~~
thecage411
> Or, how about you think about this when finding a job, and weigh the pros
> and cons of various employers' benefits and policies

Sure, if you are in high demand you can probably do this. If you work an entry
level job you won't have much leverage and since you probably can't afford to
take extended time off, you may find taking care of children somewhere near
impossible.

> We don't always need top-down guidance from bureaucrats in D.C. to solve
> societal problems.

I'm glad you qualified it with always. But a look at U.S. history shows a lot
of societal problems were helped by those bureaucrats in DC and elsewhere
(school segregation, voting rights, equal access to public transport, public
accommodations [restaurants can't deny your service based on your race], equal
opportunity employment, etc).

~~~
the_ancient
YOu do understand that all of the problems you say "bureaucrats in DC" solved,
were infact created by bureaucrats in DC and bureaucrats in local government.

Almost the entire Civil Rights act was about ending GOVERNMENT entrenched
racism and repealing laws that forced business owners to discriminate.

But hey do not let facts get in the way of irrational worship of government
like it was a deity

------
shawabawa3
I find the whole notion of "sick days" and accruing them bizarre.

What happens if you're sick but don't have enough sick days saved? Are you
fired? Stop getting payed?

For comparison, this is how sick leave works in the uk:
[https://www.gov.uk/taking-sick-leave](https://www.gov.uk/taking-sick-leave)

And I don't want to even get in to how fucked up it is to have to save up
years of vacation days to take some time off when you have a baby

~~~
chaostheory
> And I don't want to even get in to how fucked up it is to have to save up
> years of vacation days to take some time off when you have a baby

This is the trade off we pay for lower taxes. (Yes certain states like NY and
CA have higher tax rates, but they make up for it with more state benefits.)

~~~
SeoxyS
Maternity and paid sick leave policies have very little to do with tax rates.

See the CA state budget here:
[http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/2014-15/Enacted/agencies.html](http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/2014-15/Enacted/agencies.html)

The big-ticket items are the things affecting tax rates, like 11B on
corrections, or almost 50B on K-12 education, and another 50B on health care
services.

~~~
Domenic_S
CA's PFL program is part of EDD, which spends $14 Billion:
[http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/2014-15/Enacted/StateAgencyBudgets...](http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/2014-15/Enacted/StateAgencyBudgets/7000/7100/department.html)

Not all of it comes from California.

------
PeterisP
Pretty much every country in the world, both 'first-world' and poor countries,
has it better than USA in this regard.

Let this serve as a warning for young (age-with-a-potential-to-have-a-family)
people who might be tempted to relocate to California - you have to ask for a
significant premium in salary, since even in good companies (the OP lists
multiple items where her job is considered 'above average') you're simply not
getting as good conditions as the absolute minimum mandated elsewhere even for
the cheapest entry level jobs.

Locally, a shelf-stacker in the most cost-cutting-oriented local supermarket
gets far better maternity leave conditions than those described here.

~~~
maerF0x0
Learned this the hard way. My rough math is this for SF:

1.5xCurrent Salary -- Because everything is expensive here

\+ $10k / marginal tax rate -- for relocation and flights home

\+ 500/month forEach dependent spouse -- Medical Dental Vision

\+ 250/month for each child dependent -- Medical Dental Vision

\+ X -- to replace spouses's Salary because they cant work

\+ Y / marginal tax rate -- spending money to keep spouse sane because they
cant work and cant stay home all day doing nothing

Edits: small clarifications, gross Y up by tax rate

~~~
jonathanwallace
Is insurance much more expensive in California?

~~~
sarah2079
I am self employed and buy my own insurance in CA and it is about $1000/month
for two adults and one child for a silver plan through covered CA. This is for
medical only, so not too far off the estimate.

------
atonse
Few things make my blood boil more than people that robotically say things
like "It's the policy" with the kind of compassion and empathy that a robot
would show, and then go about their business without a care in the world.

~~~
ep103
This is what edmund burke meant when he said "The only thing necessary for the
triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing," and Arendt meant when she
coined the term "The banality of evil."

But I always thought it was put best by some blogger I read years ago. They
said that in the fantasy or religious worlds, evil is something that just
exists so corporeally that it might as well be a noun. An evil rock is evil by
definition.

But in the real world, such things don't exist. Evil is not a state of being
or can be encapsulated in an object. The closest definition to evil that can
be defined from a real world viewpoint, is the undertaking of action that is
done (usually out of selfishness) at the known expense of others.

Anyway, that's exactly what you are reacting to. That's objective evil. And
not to go full godwin, but our society has had large public trials where we
collectively decided that simply acting in accordance with one's job is not a
moral defense.

~~~
omurphyevans
Just a tiny nitpick - Arendt was a woman - Hannah Arendt to be more precise.

~~~
ep103
Updated, thanks!

------
humanrebar
This makes my blood boil, too.

I'd also like to point out that skimpy _paternity_ leave policy is also bad
for mothers. Some mothers are fortunate to have friends and family willing to
pause their lives to help with the transition and recovery, but some _really_
need the father around to take over running the household, especially if there
were complications during the birth.

~~~
jacalata
Lack of paternity leave ties directly into social assumptions that the mother
is the carer, the "mommy track" at work, and through to the assumption of
custody for the mother. I don't understand why it isn't a bigger issue. You
should even be able to get feminists and MRA guys to work together on this
one!

~~~
eli
Myself and all the feminists I know are definitely in favor of paternity
leave. I'm having a hard time imagining an argument against it.

~~~
humanrebar
I'm for it, but it's harder to legislate.

What if the father and the spouse are different people? What if someone meets
and moves in with an already pregnant woman? What there isn't a spouse/SO but
a live-in grandmother would want time off to perform similar functions?

It will be a challenge to both accommodate diverse family situations and make
sure all newborns and mothers are properly cared for.

~~~
eli
I don't think that's a relevant argument. The FMLA already defines fatherhood
and provides paternity leave -- it just suffers from all the many restrictions
and drawbacks as the maternity leave that are highlighted in the article.

A policy that works and feels fair for EVERY possible family situation is
probably not possible. Shouldn't stop us from trying to improve things for
most people.

------
rdtsc
Aside from police brutality, all the spying and erosion of privacy, corruption
at high level (like regulatory capture), the medical and insurance situation
points more to the fact that this country -- US, is not a civilized country.

It is a country with a high GDP, strong military, good natural resources,
strong manufacturing. All those nice things. But it is still not a civilized
country.

~~~
moconnor
As a counterpoint from civilized Germany, after the birth of a child both
parents are granted 14 months paid leave (at 2/3 salary up to ~$3k/mo) to
split between them. Usually the mother takes 12 and the father 2 concurrently.
The state pays for this, not the employer.

You also have the right to 3 years unpaid leave (extended with further
children) and the employer must find you a similar position when you return to
work.

So far this has neither economically crippled the nation nor made it
impossible for its companies to compete on the international market, nor
driven all the manufacturing and blue-collar work abroad.

I'm just astonished how such different systems can coexist. What are the
benefits of the American system and who receives them? A lower tax burden? Is
it really that much lower to be worth it?

~~~
kaitai
The real "benefit" of the American system is that it keeps everyone eager. It
keeps us grateful to have a crappy job at all. It keeps us ready to trade
salary for benefits, or vice versa. It keeps us at jobs we don't like for the
medical benefits we think they give us and our families. It reduces the
bargaining power of labor.

Is this good in the long term? Maybe not, but it is the American aesthetic. It
goes hand in hand with the perpetual hope that we will win the lottery/start
the next Facebook/work our way up the ladder and then we too can benefit from
low taxes. That's why poor Americans defend the privileges of rich Americans
to the death: if we ever make it up there we want those privileges to remain!

~~~
merrua
That can't be the case. Pretty much every country with a better handle on
these things, also has a young, eagar often educated workforce.

------
chrisBob
I am a graduate student, my wife is a post-doc, and we are expecting our first
child in the next few weeks. I actually just found out that my school recently
(this summer) made a policy allowing graduate students to take up to 60 days
of paid leave, so I am fortunate here at BU. I didn't realize how bad the US
policies are until we started talking with our (mostly foreign) coworkers who
were all surprised that my wife is still at work even though she is expecting
a baby in a few weeks. We both work in supportive labs that would probably
give us the time off that we need regardless of the school policy, but it is
scary to think what it would be like even working in another lab at the same
school some times. We really need to do more to support the women working in
the US especially when it comes to family friendly leave.

~~~
acketon
I am also at BU (staff) and my wife and I had our first child this past
spring. Our benefits are good compared to my past employers, and I took a few
weeks of paid vacation time so I could stay home with my wife and help after
her c-section. I'm glad to hear that there is leave available for graduate
students as well. Are the 60 days of paid leave for sick time or paternity
leave? I had not heard that anything changed recently with the rules around
time off.

Best of luck to you and your wife!

~~~
chrisBob
The 60 days are specified as paid paternity or maternity leave[1]. I don't
actually know what the sick leave policy is. As a graduate student your
schedule is flexible. I am not taking classes, but I can work as much as I
want, and as long as the vacations are reasonable they aren't really tracked.
I think that goes along with officially being paid for 39 hours a week with
the expectation that you are there much more.

[1] [http://www.bu.edu/academics/policies/childbirth-and-
adoption...](http://www.bu.edu/academics/policies/childbirth-and-adoption-
accommodation/)

------
mikestew
"You will be shocked to hear that the updated policy was developed in part by
a man who does not have children."

You will be shocked to hear that even men without children can recognize the
need to retain employees that they value, because you can be sure that your
competitors in the employment market will offer less misogynistic polices.

Sadly, I had to argue this very point years ago with my Microsoft coworkers.
"Wah, I don't have kids, it's unfair!" Hey, I don't have kids and never will,
but that doesn't mean I can't recognize the value of offering company benefits
that I will never use.

~~~
exelius
It sounds like OP works in academia. Unless you have tenure, the job market
works in reverse in academa: you need them more than they need you. So they
are free to fuck you over because there's always someone else ready and
willing to take your place.

~~~
mikestew
Yeah, I'm with you. I fully realize that I work in an industry that allows me
to build a hell of a nest egg, and easily find a job elsewhere. Someone posed
the question elsewhere in the comments about "what if your sick time runs out
and you're still sick?" Easy, I tell my employer what the deal is and provide
a doctor's note if requested. They don't like it? Fine, don't pay me. Fire me?
That's fine, too, I've got a pile of money for such a contingency and I'll
find another job later. (That does not, however, preclude seeking the advice
of an employment lawyer should I view the company to have acted poorly. If not
for myself, then for everyone else. EDIT: and for the record, none of that
hypothetical has happened.)

But not all, probably only few, are that fortunate. And though as I grow older
and have less need for such safety nets, I also grow to realize that shit
needs to change for all.

------
onion2k
Mothers in the UK get a full year of maternity leave at 90% pay for the first
6 weeks and then about $200/week after. You can elect to return to work
earlier (although you _have_ to take at least 2 weeks). You can start the
maternity leave up to 11 weeks before the due date.

And the UK isn't even particularly progressive about this sort of thing.
Norwegians get 13 months at 80% pay followed by up to a year unpaid. In Spain
you can take up to 3 years unpaid.

~~~
gadders
It can go up in the UK depending on your employer. IIRC my wife got 6 months
on full pay and then 6 months on the statutory (government) maternity pay.

~~~
onion2k
Absolutely, good employers do much more than the minimum. But that's true in
the US too.

------
mareofnight
This is reminding me of my first intern job, when I'd gotten an email about
"donating vacation days" to someone with an extended illness who'd used up
theirs. I didn't have any vacation days anyway because I was hourly, but I was
kind of confused why taking sick time when you're sick required having
coworkers "donate" it, so I asked a coworker why donating vacation days was
even a thing. Coworker seemed a little dismayed, thought I was saying that it
didn't make sense for people to help out a sick coworker. I had just assumed
that the company wouldn't give people a hard time about having cancer.

~~~
mercer
A very reasonable assumption, I thought. Reading these stories makes me
appreciate living where I live so much more, but also fear what seems to be
the gradual dismantling off all that over the past years.

------
dmm
I think we should have paid maternity leave and I think the federal govt
should pay for it. If you force employers to pay for it you discourage the
hiring of young women.

~~~
patrickmay
"I think the federal govt should pay for it."

Please have the decency to be explicit about what you are saying. No
government, federal or otherwise, has any means to pay for anything. All money
comes from taxes. All taxes come from individuals. What you are really saying
is "I think all of the taxpaying individuals in the United States should pay
for women's maternity leave."

Once you recognize that, I can do no better than quote P.J. O'Rourke:
"...remember that all tax revenue is the result of holding a gun to somebody's
head.

Not paying taxes is against the law. If you don't pay taxes, you'll be fined.
If you don't pay the fine, you'll be jailed. If you try to escape from jail,
you'll be shot.

Thus I -- in my role as citizen and voter -- am going to shoot you -- in your
role as taxpayer and ripe suck -- if you don't pay your fair share of the
national tab.

Therefore, every time the government spends money on anything, you have to ask
yourself, "Would I kill my kindly, gray-haired mother for this?"

So, would you kill your mother to pay for someone else's maternity leave?

~~~
mpyne
That contorted chain of logic is quite striking. And even then you miss the
_other_ questions you need to ask yourself.

"Would my kindly, gray-haired mother refuse to pay taxes for this?" "If she
didn't, would my kindly, gray-haired mother really manage to escape from
prison?" "Even if she did escape, am I certain that she would be shot instead
of apprehended and re-arrested like the majority of other escapees?"

And this is, of course, all conditional on the idea that the government would
simply throw you in jail right off instead of garnishing wages or seizing
assets to cover the tab (you know, the things that would _actually_ happen).

And the best part about all of this is that, all you've really come down to is
the idea that maybe the parent commenter didn't realize that governments can't
pay for things without taxes, as if that _very basic feature_ of how
governments work had momentarily escaped dmm just as he was typing to an HN
<textarea>.

------
mcfunley
It's really easy to get the wrong idea about post-childbirth from just
watching your friends have kids on Facebook. I think it's commonplace to
assume that the birth is the difficult part, because nobody posts about their
trauma in the weeks that follow. Birthing a child ranks on the scale of sick-
day-worthiness somewhere near a gunshot wound. This woman's treatment is
deplorable. (And yes, the whole damn system is deplorable.)

------
cafard
There should a name and shame on this one. What is the university, and what
does it think it is doing?

~~~
minimax
This is a systemic problem here in the US. It would be counterproductive to
try and single out one actor when the issue needs to be address
comprehensively.

~~~
MrZongle2
I disagree. Naming the bad actor would hopefully shame them into changing
their policy.... which in turn would put other unnamed bad actors on notice
and encourage further naming and shaming by individuals working for _them_.

If you want to move the earth, starting a landslide is a lot easier than
strip-mining.

~~~
eli
Isn't that a decision for the author? Clearly she decided differently.

------
gambiting
It's completely insane that US doesn't have unlimited sick leave like EU does.
It's just backwards and ridiculous - if someone is ill, then they are ill,
what if they don't have any sick leave left? You fire them? I literally can't
stomach this. When I was little I always thought I would emigrate to the
States to work - now I would pay not to go.

~~~
michaelochurch
Outside of the Valley and New York, where there's less competition for talent,
there are many companies that deduct sick days from vacation. This allows them
to say that they offer 15 days (which, by US standards, is about average) of
"PTO" in recruiting when it's actually less.

When companies pull that shit, you see people getting a lot sicker, because
people come into the office when they should be staying home. The month of
February becomes a constant, never-ending cold.

~~~
viewer5
I'm at my first job out of college and it's like that here (taking off if
you're sick = PTO)

Is that not the norm?

~~~
nostrademons
Yeah, most good office jobs give you sick days "as needed" \- take them on the
honor system, don't abuse it or your manager will get suspicious, but they
don't check up on it. The reason is that they don't want to incentivize
employees to come to work when sick, because then they get everyone else sick
and the whole office's productivity is reduced.

------
tragomaskhalos
In the UK our [pm]aternity leave allowance is not exactly enlightened, but
even so this left me open-mouthed. Scandinavian readers or readers from other
countries that actually bother to look after their workers properly must be
utterly incredulous at your treatment.

------
Spooky23
I work for an employer with generous benefit policies and am male, but even
still ran into enough HR nonsense that it felt as if I was the first human
working for an organization with over 150k employees who had ever had a child.

In short, I was:

\- Warned that I could potentially be charged with fraud for enrolling my wife
in family health coverage before the baby's birth.

\- Told that I would "void my FMLA rights" if I performed any work activity
while off. (Although I had 10 weeks of paid accruals and supervisory approval
to take off!) The overzealous HR person tried to have my accounts disabled as
well. Stopping this required that I walk into the HR Director's office and
complain -- not an option for people lower down in the hierarchy.

\- Charged $750 because my son had the temerity to be born after the new year,
and hospitalization pre-approvals expire with the calendar year.

My wife had a whole litany of wacky things happen. It is a nightmare.

------
jmount
Nasty treatment. And in many places you can't even attempt to bank the sick-
leave in the first place.

~~~
LanceH
Or bank any leave at all. My current employer wipes vacation days on Jan 1.

~~~
tgb
Aren't they generally required to pay you for accrued leave or is even that
not required?

~~~
Buttons840
My employer will not pay us for accrued leave. I saw the end result recently
when a co-worker took a week and a half off only to return with his
resignation in hand. Guess he cashed out his vacation time anyway....

Now we all realize that if someone is going to resign, it's most likely going
to happen after a long vacation. I don't know if HR realizes this yet.

------
kclay
I went through this last year with the birth of our second son. My wife was
making sure that everything would be taking care for talking to HR multiple
times and they all saying she would be fine. Come time for her to take time
off we were presented with a whole other story. First she would't get all the
weeks off because she went into labor a week early then expected and to top
that she wouldn't be getting paid over the summer (She worked as a school RN
at this time). So we were out 5 months of income. Luckily I gotten into a bad
habit of placing all the money I will need for my taxes at years end into my
account and just not touching it. Well that bad habit saved us for sure, but
now the taxes are a pain in the ass. I guess that's life.

~~~
astrange
> Luckily I gotten into a bad habit of placing all the money I will need for
> my taxes at years end into my account and just not touching it.

If you need to pay taxes in the US are you not supposed to be paying the
estimated tax quarterly, not at the end of the year?

That way you'd get more stable expenses.

~~~
kclay
Yeah thats true. There is a small penalty for that. Been trying to figure out
what I can write off cause my overhead is low , can't do car, or office stuff
cause I dont buy any and all the normal stuff you would write off.

------
themoonbus
Sometimes I'm immensely proud to be part of this country (second-generation
immigrant), but reading things like this make me feel like I live in the most
backwards place in the world.

The richest country somehow can't provide a basic standard of living for so
many of its citizens.

------
laichzeit0
My boss once told me "90% of the ridiculous policies are in place to prevent
the 10% that abuse it". It's a sad shame, but there are people that really
abuse sick leave and the rest of us have to pay for it.

In South Africa all employees are entitled to AT LEAST 4 consecutive months of
maternity leave, up to 1 month prior to giving birth, or earlier if a doctor
says so. You're also required by law not to return to work for at least 6
weeks post giving birth, unless a doctor okay's it.

[http://www.labour.gov.za/DOL/legislation/acts/basic-
guides/b...](http://www.labour.gov.za/DOL/legislation/acts/basic-guides/basic-
guide-to-maternity-leave)

~~~
CanSpice
I'm not sure how you would go about getting pregnant just to "abuse the
system". "I know, I'll get pregnant, go through nine months of hormonal and
physical changes that'll mess with my body in crazy ways I didn't know
existed, go through a major medical procedure, and then keep another living
being alive while going through even more hormonal and physical changes just
so I can get some paid time off work."

Your boss is crazy.

~~~
laichzeit0
Yeah sorry I wasn't clear, I meant stupid policies in general, like fixed
working hours, set time for lunch breaks, not using printers for "personal
use". Normal people wouldn't abuse thigs like these. Oh crap I need to print
out a proof of payment. Shit I can't use the work printer because it's against
policy. Fuck I have to waste my lunch break going to the post office. Another
guy is printing out pages and pages of lecture notes for his kid. How do we
solve this? Create a draconian policy like "NO printing for personal use".
That's the typical knee jerk corporate reaction to managing the 10% of people
that abuse things instead of having to deal with abusers on a case by case
basis.

------
AndrewKemendo
I took a full month off of work after my last two children were born (couldn't
do it for my first born, but that is a different story). Luckily my wife is a
stay at home mom and we could pull it off with one income. I think most people
underestimate the value to the family of having this time off.

As an employer though, I am conflicted about mandatory policies. Actually, let
me rephrase that, I am conflicted about situations in which people take
massive blocks off of work - for babies or otherwise. The reason is what you
would expect: As an employer I probably cannot find someone who is a direct
replacement for that employee during that period.

Depending on the stage, size and speed of an organization, having a key person
out of the office could potentially break the company. I know for a fact that
if our CTO took a month off of work we would probably go out of business. Now,
we are a three man startup so that is clearly different than massive
organizations like IBM etc..., but my guess is that the majority of companies
fall into the category where losing a person for a month is crippling.

So the best thing I can come up with as a strategy for maternity/paternity
leave is this: The person who will be taking the leave, upon knowledge that
they are pregnant should work with their employer for the following months to
identify a temporary hire who can do their work in their absence. Assuming the
company could handle it, the company would absorb the new hire cost from hide,
but if not a negotiation should be made about half-pay or some other
compensation such that the company can afford the hire.

Without government or some other entity actually ponying up money that would
compensate the company for the absence, I don't see any way to balance those
books for up and coming businesses.

I should just add that at the end of the day, customers don't care that your
employee just had a baby, they just want their product to work. Except in rare
cases customers do not seem to be at a place where they are willing to absorb
a cost like this so inevitably the cost is either born by the employer or is
forced to be socialized (not a bad word here) through regulation.

~~~
lutorm
_I know for a fact that if our CTO took a month off of work we would probably
go out of business_

Well, reality is that your CTO could get hit by a car, get sick, or not be
able to work for a month for all kinds of reasons unrelated to childbirth, so
that seems like a problem in general. At least when it comes to children, you
have many months of warning.

Or, have you considered what would happen if your CTO said "actually, my
family is more important to me than the company"? If the company fails without
them, they are in a pretty strong negotiating position.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
Your point is exactly why I stated for pregnancy situations - emergencies and
"acts of god" can't really be planned for outside of having some kind of
contingency fund/plan.

 _If the company fails without them, they are in a pretty strong negotiating
position._

As are all the founders in a startup, that's not really saying much.

------
serve_yay
It seems crazy to me to have children in this country, you're always a broken
limb or car accident away from absolute catastrophe. And by comparison I'm
doing a _lot_ better than most of my fellow countrymen, so if anyone should
want to reproduce it should be people like me. But we have made the prospect
rather unappealing.

------
diafygi
I understand why Karen feels she must redact the name of her employer, but it
would be so very helpful if she named names. It would educate the rest of us
to avoid working there.

------
jrs235
That stinks. For others looking to have children you may want to research
short term disability options.

[http://www.babycenter.com/0_maternity-leave-the-
basics_449.b...](http://www.babycenter.com/0_maternity-leave-the-
basics_449.bc)

------
therzathegza
Canada gets this so right with {p|m}aternity leave for either parent, which
levels the playing field for both sexes.

Disclaimer: I am an American who is a product of the military health care
system, and thinks it is a real solution for civilian healthcare. Also, I
intend to move to Canada in the next <10y. There is no free health care, but
I'm happy to pay the tax that supports it if it means I won't lose everything
due to catastrophic illness.

------
zhte415
In China, maternity leave is 5 months paid at the salary of the average of all
employees of the company, and is taken at a flexible time before or after
birth. This can mean a rise of a cut in income.

Paternity leave yet has to make such bounds.

~~~
jacalata
Wow, that's a really interesting way to set the payment level.

------
at-fates-hands
Is this the difference between working in academia and working at a large
corporation?

Most of the large companies I worked for had 12 weeks paid vacation and then
you could do an additional 12 weeks which wasn't paid for the primary care
giver. Otherwise, as a non-primary, you still got 2 weeks paid.

Also, I remember several female sales people abusing the system pretty well.
They'd get within a month or so of their due date, then go to the doctor and
get mandatory bed rest. Company would send them home and keep paying them 80%
of their commission plus their salary based on the last three months of their
commission rates.

I also saw a lot of guys claiming they were the primary so then both parents
could get their 12 weeks of paid time off to spend time with the newborn
together.

~~~
gknoy
As a father, I spent an astounding amount of time in the first month of my
kids' lives caring for them, and then also caring for my wife.

If the father is going to spend 12 weeks with the newborn and the new mother,
you can bet your ass that they're likely not sitting around playing CoD or
watching TV. I basically did everything except for breastfeeding, and it was
freaking exhausting.

Non-parents have no idea how lucky they are to be able to have a spouse that
has slept more than an hour a night for the past month.

~~~
at-fates-hands
>>> If the father is going to spend 12 weeks with the newborn and the new
mother, you can bet your ass that they're likely not sitting around playing
CoD or watching TV. I basically did everything except for breastfeeding, and
it was freaking exhausting.

Agreed. The guys I knew who said they were the primary did it so they could
help their wives and were happy they did. Some of the guys who opted just for
the two weeks said it wasn't enough, they wanted more time to spend with their
newborns.

------
gglitch
Genuinely curious - where are the markets-should-be-completely-unregulated
guys on this?

~~~
coryfklein
Well, the FMLA _IS_ government regulation, and it isn't working so well.

Besides, plenty of other governments regulate this, and they do things
differently. Government regulation vs no regulation doesn't really weigh in
here.

~~~
gglitch
I guess I was thinking of the abstract question of how someone would
convincingly argue that the plight of new parents would be better off in
general with no government regulation at all. I agree that the FMLA is grossly
inadequate, but not one of the businesses I've worked for in my entire career,
so far as I know, has voluntarily offered anything better.

~~~
coryfklein
I am a free market proponent. It is difficult to predict what the free market
would make of this situation since we are currently so far from the free-
market model. Here are a few stabs at looking in my crystal ball.

* Minimum wage laws pressure companies to cut benefits such as this.

* Many laws and regulations make it more difficult to start your own business. In a free market, having more small business owners would even the playing field and make benefits like this more common.

* When businesses no longer have terrible laws like the FMLA to serve as a reference for their time off policies, more would craft their policy based on attracting and retaining talent. Businesses that do so naturally are more likely to succeed and will crowd others out of the market.

* Since people can't rely on a government for their own welfare in a free market, they would be more proactively aware of time off policies when taking a new job, thus creating a natural pressure for better policies.

* Since businesses wouldn't have the "We're completely compliant with federal regulations" cop-out, more outcry may result from stories like the OP because these policies are actually counter-productive to business.

But in the end none of that really matters in the free-market debate. Either
you _do_ have the right to use force against people who are honoring a
mutually agreed contract, or you don't. If I want to work for a company with a
no-time-off policy, what right do you have to steal that company's money
(fines) or property (confiscation)? What did we ever do to you?

If it's okay to use morality as an argument to make such laws, then why is it
not okay to use morality as an argument to leave people be?

~~~
gglitch
Thanks for the thoughtful response. I can appreciate the difficulties of
hypothesizing, and I hadn't thought about it (at least directly) from a moral
standpoint. It's still difficult for me to believe that in a totally free
market the majority of employees, especially those who have a harder time
finding jobs to begin with, and spend their whole careers accepting
unfavorable terms just to stay employed, would find themselves with better
options for family planning, but maybe it'd be so.

------
sipsop
Just want to point out that (while rare outside of government jobs I imagine).
Some employers offer very low cost insurance you can take out that guarantees
you pay, for up to a certain number of months off, if you pay into it. My wife
and I are in the age range where most people procreate so she will put money
into this until we decide we will no longer be considering child birth.
Unfortunately, I cannot recall exactly what the term for this is, but I do
know it's about 9 USD a month for us and guarantees us that she will receive
full pay throughout the 12 weeks for FMLA. We are located in MN and this is a
government job. My main point is always make sure to be aware of what options
are available. Things at most places make just having a child incredibly
difficult for families (as if it's not inherently difficult enough) so do as
much research as possible, until we have a better, mandated system for
protecting women who are giving birth (and nursing which is a whole other
subject where we need to make some serious changes for women's/families'
rights).

------
eli
To put a positive spin on this terrible story, offering generous leave and
other benefits is one way startups can punch above their weight when hiring.
With regards to maternity & paternity leave it's also just the right thing to
do.

I think my single favorite part about being a founder is that I get to create
the kind of company that I want to work at.

------
amaterasu
Why do modern societies not wish to halt their ageing population issues and
increase their tax base? Children are an INVESTMENT. Over the life of the
child (assuming they remain in their country of birth of course) the taxation
earned should more than offset the cost of funding parental leave. This is
insanity...

------
pnathan
As a hopefully future dad, the entire [pm]aternity discussion is totally
disheartening. I simply will not be able to be at home and have any kind of
paid paternity leave. Since my wife is not full-time employed, we'll have zero
income. It's really frustrating & a bummer.

------
ShaneOG
Looking at this from a country outside of the US, it's almost as if US
employment laws were created with lots of help from large corporations who
wanted to treat their employees like workhorses rather than people.

------
yardie
> employers in the U.S. do not care about mothers of young children at all,
> unless we’re consumers of their products. It might be more accurate to say
> that they view us as horrible useless burdens who need to be ushered back to
> full-time work as swiftly as possible. They will do anything in their power
> to keep employees from exercising their federally guaranteed rights

This opinion would not be out of place on this site where some users complain
about other workers not working hard enough simply because they had the gall
to leave at their contractually appointed time.

------
jackmaney
The older I get, the more disappointed I tend to become with my country.

------
tortos123
WHAT A NIGHTMARE!

In your case I'd speak with the highest ranked staff I could find in the UNI
and let them know the situation... not even in the army are that cruel.

If that person couldn't help, I'd quit that awful environment and I'd also try
to publish it through the News or something. Get some bad publicity going on
for them!

This is not a place for human to work in... Time flies and the birth of a
child is not something you'l see everyday!

------
paulddraper
There's no reason for an employer to offer special paid maternity leave for
not working. It doesn't make sense, and it's not fair to others who do work
during that time.

On the other hand, not offering sick leave for recovery from childbirth is
just plain stupid. Recovery from surgery, recovery from C-section, recovery
from vaginal delivery...that sounds like sick leave to me.

------
RevRal
This is absolutely terrifying and ridiculous.

This basically feels like a cultural whiplash towards women for even thinking
of not succumbing to the will of the patriarchy, the only option being the
stay-at-home wife, as in: women need to remember their place.

Sure, you're not required to be married to have kids, but we are going to
punish you for not putting yourself into that very specific lifestyle.

------
CapitalistCartr
I wonder how a simple law stating that "sick leave" can be used for having a
baby would work for this.

------
hderms
Pretty disgusting all around. I guess I'll never understand the mindset of
people who would perpetrate things like this on innocents in the sake of
short-term profits. Long-term profits are probably harder to make the case for
when they're based on treating your employees like garbage.

------
drderidder
"S... O... C-I-A... L-I-S-M is the only way" (Sam Roberts, The Canadian Dream)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tutTzTYuU1Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tutTzTYuU1Y)

------
vampirechicken
In my experience, it is more common for a company to make you burn all of your
accrued vacation and sick leave before you can get your 12 weeks unpaid FMLA
leave.

------
StronglyTyped
The problem has nothing to do with the country. The problem is that the HR
clerk, like all HR clerks, is an idiot.

~~~
john_b
The (unstated) objection that can be inferred from the article is that because
the US has no firm protections here, it pushes the burden and costs of these
programs onto employers, who are incentivized to minimize spending on these
programs (and thus the benefits).

------
supercanuck
I wonder how being a woman at Netflix and other such companies with their
unlimited vacation policy is like .

~~~
_dark_matter_
Not sure about Netflix, but I know that when I was at Twitter they offered 12
weeks of paid vacation leave (paternity and maternity). Some of this was
mandated, and paid for, by the state.

~~~
darkstar999
Looks like Californians are lucky enough to get 16-18 weeks paid maternity
leave.

[http://siliconvalleymamas.com/2013/03/understanding-
maternit...](http://siliconvalleymamas.com/2013/03/understanding-maternity-
leave-in-california-2013-edition/)

------
dailen
Ugh...that's heart wrenching :(

------
udkl
Isn't this a case of a bad HR rather than of 'feminism' ?

------
computerjunkie
Its disappointing to see this happen in 2014.

------
gknoy
How is this not bounds for a lawsuit?? I suspect that had she mentioned a
lawyer, they might have been more accomodating.

------
joesmo
This seems like another way to discriminate against and hurt women.

~~~
astrange
Your comment can only describe half the situation, insofar as it takes two
people to start a family.

~~~
joesmo
No. The post is about paid sick leave under FMLA. Are you seriously suggesting
fathers should get sick leave for this? That's ridiculous, despite the
allowance for paid leave being meager. Much more should be mandated by law but
for a father to claim being sick after his partner's childbirth is ridiculous.

------
michaelochurch
_The takeaway from all of this: employers in the U.S. do not care about
mothers of young children at all, unless we’re consumers of their products. It
might be more accurate to say that they view us as horrible useless burdens
who need to be ushered back to full-time work as swiftly as possible. They
will do anything in their power to keep employees from exercising their
federally guaranteed rights to twelve weeks of MOTHERFUCKING UNPAID LEAVE, up
to and including forcing employees to give up paid sick leave._

Wow. She is a hero for writing this.

Here's what's terrifying, and it's why our society is doomed to fail in the
next 30 years if it keeps acting up this way: we _need_ people like her to
reproduce, and we're punishing them when they do.

Extreme economic inequality, a bad health insurance system, an expensive
education mess that puts a huge burden on parents, declining social mobility,
and a corporate structure that punishes childbirth and the raising of children
(especially for women) have had an anti-eugenic effect. The thoughtless,
ignorant people who live in the present are having lots of children-- just as
many as ever. The thoughtful, well-educated ones are having fewer kids,
because they're more attuned to the cues of society and the obvious signal
that they're not wanted by this world. We're seeing an adverse differential in
reproduction.

If something kills the U.S., it's not going to be China or the EU and it's
certainly not going to be immigration, which is a good thing. It's going to be
the adverse reproductive differential caused by a society that penalizes
intelligent, thoughtful parents. (It also penalizes less intelligent parents,
but they don't give a shit and breed anyway.) That issue is the one serious
existential threat to us as a society.

~~~
drostie
I normally really like you and upvote your comments as thoughtful, but in this
case I really have to disagree. Eugenics arguments are deeply flawed. They are
based on an assumption that the nature-vs-nurture debate is decided firmly in
the nature direction, and that assumption is wrong.

"[A] point-of-view is worth 80 IQ points. If we're born in 10,000 BC with the
IQ of Leonardo [da Vinci]... not a lot is gonna happen. Because it's not a
question of being smart; we--we aren't a very smart species. We can accumulate
knowledge, and that helps, but most traditional societies have accumulated a
lot of knowledge. The things that make big changes are changes in our context,
like the invention of reading and writing, the invention of modern science
four hundred years ago. Those completely changed the way we look at the
world." [1]

People who are smarter individually are generally not smarter because they had
smart genes, but because they've _practiced more_. I mean, I think talent
exists, sure, but I do not think you can distinguish easily between _innate_
talent that is somehow biological versus _learned_ talent acquired by practice
which has since been totally hidden from view (a childhood hobby of drawing,
for example). Smart parents have smarter kids because they practice them more
in thinking in smart ways.

It occurs to me rereading your comment that you don't outright say _genetic_
differences -- but it seems to be a present subtext. I guess this issue has
hit home for me since a long time ago: it's a private peeve of mine, when
people say that adopted kids are "not really your" kids. I've heard several
variations of those words and each time it _bugs_ me because _of course_ they
are your kids. I have two adopted siblings, and two biological siblings, and
because we are closer in age and went to similar schools, I am much more like
my adopted siblings than my biological siblings. Of _course_ I am; we did the
same things as children.

It's not that genetics has nothing to say on any matter, but that its
influence on your present state is much smaller than you'd think. Evolution
happens over much longer time-scales and represents a slight force in an
extremely noisy environment, something like a random walk with a slightly
biased coin. Even if someone had a genetic predisposition to smartness, this
might be based on a 'chord' of genes which need to work together, highly
unlikely to be inheritable. Over the next two hundred years we don't need to
watch a 'reproductive differential'; we need to watch an 'education
differential' and a 'cultural differential'.

[1]
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXoSK4tLxK8](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXoSK4tLxK8)

~~~
josho
If you are born poor in America the statistics show that you will stay poor.
Despite the belief that there is mobility between classes in the US, that is
largely decreasing. Thanks to cutbacks on public schools, a regressive tax
system, etc the upward mobility in the US has been steadily decreasing.

The parent's point has nothing to do with genes, but rather their hypothesis
is that the poor as a % of population in the US will grow. While the educated
white collar demographic will decrease.

~~~
drostie
I tried to mention that, but he _did_ explicitly say "eugenics" and it wasn't
100% clear that it was metaphorical.

~~~
rosser
No, he said economic inequality, healthcare and education policy, social
immobility, and parent-unfriendly corporate structures have a net "anti-
eugenic" effect, which you chose to interpret as an argument for eugenics.

~~~
drostie
Is it unreasonable for me to interpret someone who is against "anti-eugenic"
effects to be for eugenic effects when they start their comments with "we
_need_ people like her to reproduce"...?

I should clarify: when I say "for eugenic effects" I mean "in support of the
general ideas underlying eugenics, even if opposed to eugenic policies." I'm
saying above that both eugenics and his "anti-eugenic effects" are _based on a
flawed idea_ , one which michaelochurch (correct me if I'm wrong) seems to
still endorse regardless of whether he is for or against eugenic policies.

------
notastartup
What fucking company is this? They are just asking for free publicity.

------
chiph
Escalate.

