bobosensei
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Post by bobosensei on Aug 12, 2015 0:22:33 GMT -5
I think Netflix is kidding themselves that anyone will actually be able to take a year off without some sort of issue. I mean you see what people are writing in this thread. If someone really tries to take advantage of this their co-workers and supervisors will be pissed. Maybe not directly and publically, but you can bet everyone will remember when it comes time for promotion that candidate x only took 3 months and candidate y took 12. The work place is going to look unfavorably on this despite what is allowed. And I imagine that there will be some sort of expectation that the person work from home a bit or take calls and emails after a certain point.
But the only way to make progress is for companies to decide to change, and then give it time to be a new normal for a different generation of workers. But I don't think this will spread very far. Maybe tech companies need to offer this to see if it helps keep talented women in the workforce, but it isn't something other industries need to worry about.
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weltschmerz
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Post by weltschmerz on Aug 12, 2015 0:28:39 GMT -5
Having kids is good for society. Especially the way programs like social security and Medicare are run in this country. Those kids are someday going to be paying for you healthcare and they'll be your doctors and nurses too. How many more do we need to add to the list of things the child-free subsidize for those that have children? There is already significant preference in the tax code, there has to be a limit. So, you don't want Americans to have a decent replacement birth level? You'll have to import immigrants from the third world. Which demographic would you like a huge influx of? Pakistani? Chinese? Middle Eastern?
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whoisjohngalt
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Post by whoisjohngalt on Aug 12, 2015 0:29:03 GMT -5
I can't speak to the statistics at large, but I've seen numerous cases where a woman will take maternity leave, then quit right after. From talking with my sister and a few other women, the maternity leave policy didn't really have much influence on their ultimate loyalty to the employer. But as I said, if some employers want to offer it, more power to them. That's totally anecdotal. There are just as many cases of women whose generous company maternity leave (or family friendly work life) made going back to work easier and something they wanted to do and felt good doing. My company is terrible when it comes to paid maternity leave (as in, it doesn't exist), b ut they are family friendly in that the hours are flexible, I can leave to go watch my kiddo do his daycare program that's at 10am and come back, I can occasionally work from home if needed, etc - all of those contributed to me wanting to go back to work, though I would have preferred the option to take 4 or 6 months off with my job still protected. That's very different. I can totally see someone staying with the company that makes their life easier for years. And it of course the company would benefit from it as well. Maternity leave is different, though.
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whoisjohngalt
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Post by whoisjohngalt on Aug 12, 2015 0:33:33 GMT -5
Big political and social issues aside, I can not imagine many companies would be able to essential pay two salaries for the same position for a year or even 6 months.
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weltschmerz
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Post by weltschmerz on Aug 12, 2015 0:39:11 GMT -5
Big political and social issues aside, I can not imagine many companies would be able to essential pay two salaries for the same position for a year or even 6 months. AGAIN...that's not how we do it. It's paid through UI.
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skubikky
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Post by skubikky on Aug 12, 2015 6:20:04 GMT -5
So, the government mandates let's say 6 month paid maternity leave for both parents. What's next, mandatory full coverage on health insurance, dental , vision? Um .....let's see ... 8 weeks vacation a year? Unlimited sick days or personal time.
How far should legislation go to determine how private companies will provide benefits?
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 12, 2015 6:37:13 GMT -5
How many more do we need to add to the list of things the child-free subsidize for those that have children? There is already significant preference in the tax code, there has to be a limit. So, you don't want Americans to have a decent replacement birth level? You'll have to import immigrants from the third world. Which demographic would you like a huge influx of? Pakistani? Chinese? Middle Eastern? Where did I say the U.S. should not have a decent replacement birth level? I asked how many more things the child free need to subsidize for the parents and noted there are already plenty of things in the U.S. tax code that already do this. Maybe the answer isn't always a cash grab from one part of society to another. It doesn't appear it has helped Canada restore their birthrate to 2.1: "Despite some fluctuations, the total fertility rate in Canada has been below the replacement level for over 40 years. In fact, 1971 was the last year the replacement-level fertility of 2.1 children per woman was reached—meaning that couples, on average, had produced enough children to replace themselves. In 2011, the total fertility rate was 1.61 children per woman, up slightly from the record low of 1.51 about a decade earlier" www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11-630-x/11-630-x2014002-eng.htm
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alabamagal
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Post by alabamagal on Aug 12, 2015 6:51:11 GMT -5
And the UI premiums are paid by whom? Money is money. Paying two salaries for a year costs more than paying a single salary for a year. It's either an added cost to employers, employees, or both. Either way it affects employees. Business that have higher overhead on each employee hire fewer of them, or pay them less. At the end of the day it comes out of employees pockets in one way or another. When you have a business with employees you write them a check for their wages. Then you write a check to government for their income taxes withheld. Then you write a check to Social security for the 6% withheld PLUS your 6%. Same with Medicare. Then you write a check for Unemploymrnt federal and state that the employees do not pay. There may be other taxes I am leaving out So a $10 an hour employee costs more than $10. And the more you pay the employee the more the taxes are. So if you want to add a Maternity tax, it is an additional cost to the business. Someone has to pay. Nothing is free.
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yogiii
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Post by yogiii on Aug 12, 2015 6:56:20 GMT -5
One thing that annoys me is that most people do not have any paid maternity/paternity leave. They have the 6-8 weeks of SHORT TERM DISABILITY, the same for anyone who has broken their leg, had a heart attack, had a baby, etc. It is likely an insurance policy that the employee has paid into, sometimes the company pays for the policy. In addition, you have the other 4-6 weeks of unpaid FMLA.
I don't know what is fair but I know I hate when I hear about "paid maternity leave" which is really just short term disability.
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emma1420
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Post by emma1420 on Aug 12, 2015 7:08:47 GMT -5
I think there are two things that could be done right now. The first is to require any employer who has has 50 or more employee (which is the cut off for FMLA), to provide short-term disability leave. Most provide this anyway so it wouldn't be an additional burden. The second would be to require those leave policies to authorise that leave to be up to 12 weeks rather than 6 weeks for a natural birth and 8 weeks for a c-section.
Where I work we have six weeks of paid maternity leave and one week of paid paternity leave (at 100% of pay). We have fewer than 50 employees so don't qualify until FLMA. We do have a policy that if you quit your job within one year of your leave that you need to pay back your leave money (although they've never enforced that).
i think the discussion about workload needs to be a separate one. Because employers tend to expect other employees to pick up the slack no matter the reason a person is out. Although, I do think now that the job market is picking up that those organisations that do that will see a high turnover rate as a result. I know many people who have changed jobs in the last year or two because of unrealistic productivity demands from employers.
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973beachbum
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Post by 973beachbum on Aug 12, 2015 7:43:28 GMT -5
And the UI premiums are paid by whom? Money is money. Paying two salaries for a year costs more than paying a single salary for a year. It's either an added cost to employers, employees, or both. Either way it affects employees. Business that have higher overhead on each employee hire fewer of them, or pay them less. At the end of the day it comes out of employees pockets in one way or another. NJ already has a smaller version of this and no no employer I have ever met has ever complained about it. At least not from a cost POV. The problem with NJ's isn't that everyone has to pay that small percent of their pay every year. It's that it didn't go far enough. People don't just up and quit their jobs because it was so wonderful. They do it because they are not ready to come back. They haven't had a good nights sleep since before the baby was born. Daycare if you can even find it for a 7 week old baby costs more than most people IRL make or darn close to it. And I want to add that that from reading this thread, apparently when it suits YM's purposes, the plural of anecdote is data.
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cael
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Post by cael on Aug 12, 2015 8:00:28 GMT -5
One thing that annoys me is that most people do not have any paid maternity/paternity leave. They have the 6-8 weeks of SHORT TERM DISABILITY, the same for anyone who has broken their leg, had a heart attack, had a baby, etc. It is likely an insurance policy that the employee has paid into, sometimes the company pays for the policy. In addition, you have the other 4-6 weeks of unpaid FMLA. I don't know what is fair but I know I hate when I hear about "paid maternity leave" which is really just short term disability. Yup, when I have a kid that's what I'll use, short term disability. I think I'll get paid for 4 weeks at full pay, and there's a 2 week gap before that kicks in - which as long as the boss approves it, I can use my sick time for (of which I have almost 400 hours, no joke). So then I'll be on the hook for the last 6 weeks unpaid of FMLA. Sucks but it's better than many people I know. I'd really like to take the 12 weeks so I'll have to bulk up savings to float us those 6 weeks I don't get paid for.
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thyme4change
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Post by thyme4change on Aug 12, 2015 8:19:15 GMT -5
Maternity leave is such a middle-class economic issue, and that is why it plays politically. The reality is almost 1/3 of employees don't get a single paid sick day - that means the guy making your burger has to decide to stay home when he is throwing up and lose that income, or come in and work anyway - just to make sure he can still pay the bills. Before I take a stance that every woman should be compensated for long periods of time for replicating, I think we have much more tragic circumstances to deal with. But, alas, us middle class voters don't give two craps about those low income suckers, so if someone took that stance, it would take us into the same rabbit hole that welfare discussions go in.
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steph08
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Post by steph08 on Aug 12, 2015 8:25:38 GMT -5
One thing that annoys me is that most people do not have any paid maternity/paternity leave. They have the 6-8 weeks of SHORT TERM DISABILITY, the same for anyone who has broken their leg, had a heart attack, had a baby, etc. It is likely an insurance policy that the employee has paid into, sometimes the company pays for the policy. In addition, you have the other 4-6 weeks of unpaid FMLA. I don't know what is fair but I know I hate when I hear about "paid maternity leave" which is really just short term disability. Same here. We have short-term disability. There is a waiting week which we have to cover with leave time or it is unpaid. 6 weeks covered at 60% for a natural birth, 8 weeks covered at 60% for a C-section. And we have paid leave - which means that we don't differentiate between sick time and vacation time. So I spent years saving up my hours so that I could have a "paid" maternity leave.
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The Captain
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Post by The Captain on Aug 12, 2015 8:33:27 GMT -5
How many more do we need to add to the list of things the child-free subsidize for those that have children? There is already significant preference in the tax code, there has to be a limit. So, you don't want Americans to have a decent replacement birth level? You'll have to import immigrants from the third world. Which demographic would you like a huge influx of? Pakistani? Chinese? Middle Eastern? What exactly are you implying by that Weltz? Why did you chose those specific demographics?
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milee
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Post by milee on Aug 12, 2015 8:36:44 GMT -5
How many more do we need to add to the list of things the child-free subsidize for those that have children? There is already significant preference in the tax code, there has to be a limit. So, you don't want Americans to have a decent replacement birth level? You'll have to import immigrants from the third world. Which demographic would you like a huge influx of? Pakistani? Chinese? Middle Eastern?
As someone who married one of the recent immigrants - who was more educated and has contributed more to the tax base than 99% of American citizens - I don't see this as being a bad solution. We have millions of people lined up to immigrate - would be a much easier and less expensive solution than mandating a year of maternity leave. We could further improve the system by making a few small changes, such as giving preference to the immigrants who have certain skills and are likely to actually add to the intellectual and tax base (like my husband did) rather than accepting anybody with a pulse.
We are just now reaching the point where 50% of births are covered by Medicaid and the numbers have been steadily increasing every year. This indicates that in addition to the declining birth rate, we're having a very undesirable shift from having our most productive, successful citizens reproducing to instead having our least productive, successful citizens doing most of the reproducing. Our social incentives are a big part of this shift. Instead of continuing down the social incentive path, let's look at some other alternatives.
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The Captain
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Post by The Captain on Aug 12, 2015 8:40:06 GMT -5
milee - Well stated. I couldn't have said it better if I tried.
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NomoreDramaQ1015
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Post by NomoreDramaQ1015 on Aug 12, 2015 8:46:23 GMT -5
IDK just to play devil's advocate part of the premise of Idiocracy is the smart people were postponing having kids b/c it was never the right time. They wanted to have more money saved, they wanted to be in better spots in their careers blah blah. By the time they were ready the woman was unable to have kids. MAYBE ::dons flame suit:: if we presented the option of a year's maternity leave women wouldn't feel the need to postpone or even forgo having children all together in the name of their careers. That would potenitally lead to more higher earning "smart" people having kids. It also sure as hell would make getting daycare more flexible. There are places here that have a 1-2 year waiting list. I would have had to call and get on the list before Gwen was even a twinkle in our eyes. WTF am I supposed to do when I need to go back to work in 8 weeks? I thank the Gods I found our daycare at pretty much the last minute otherwise we'd have had some decisions to make. Having a year to figure out daycare would make going back to work a lot less stressful and make it much more easier to decide to go back to work. I can understand quitting when you can't get in anywhere and any place you can costs more than your freaking mortgage. Just a thought.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 12, 2015 8:48:01 GMT -5
milee - Well stated. I couldn't have said it better if I tried. Agreed! Have either of you seen "Idiocracy"? A comedy about what happens going forward with the exact trend Milee cites.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 12, 2015 8:52:15 GMT -5
IDK just to play devil's advocate part of the premise of Idiocracy is the smart people were postponing having kids b/c it was never the right time. They wanted to have more money saved, they wanted to be in better spots in their careers blah blah. By the time they were ready the woman was unable to have kids. MAYBE ::dons flame suit:: if we presented the option of a year's maternity leave women wouldn't feel the need to postpone or even forgo having children all together in the name of their careers. That would potenitally lead to more higher earning "smart" people having kids. It also sure as hell would make getting daycare more flexible. There are places here that have a 1-2 year waiting list. I would have had to call and get on the list before Gwen was even a twinkle in our eyes. WTF am I supposed to do when I need to go back to work in 8 weeks? I thank the Gods I found our daycare at pretty much the last minute otherwise we'd have had some decisions to make. Having a year to figure out daycare would make going back to work a lot less stressful and make it much more easier to decide to go back to work. I can understand quitting when you can't get in anywhere and any place you can costs more than your freaking mortgage. Just a thought. It isn't working in Canada, their birthrate going back 40 years is lower than the U.S. (See my previous post above for article). ***** you hit Idiocracy right before I did, well played!
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Miss Tequila
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Post by Miss Tequila on Aug 12, 2015 8:54:00 GMT -5
How many more do we need to add to the list of things the child-free subsidize for those that have children? There is already significant preference in the tax code, there has to be a limit. So, you don't want Americans to have a decent replacement birth level? You'll have to import immigrants from the third world. Which demographic would you like a huge influx of? Pakistani? Chinese? Middle Eastern? And yet out birth rate per thousand is higher than Canada's.
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yogiii
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Post by yogiii on Aug 12, 2015 8:55:09 GMT -5
I took an unpaid one year leave of absence. It is a perk my company offers, though most use it to go back to school. The problem is, most jobs do not have that type of perk. Especially jobs for lower income people. So another inequity in the system I suppose.
My integration back in was seamless, we work on multiple projects at a time, sometimes short term. I just returned to a similar but different project, some colleagues didn't even realize I had been on a leave and thought I was just working in another building.
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milee
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Post by milee on Aug 12, 2015 9:03:31 GMT -5
IDK just to play devil's advocate part of the premise of Idiocracy is the smart people were postponing having kids b/c it was never the right time. They wanted to have more money saved, they wanted to be in better spots in their careers blah blah. By the time they were ready the woman was unable to have kids. MAYBE ::dons flame suit:: if we presented the option of a year's maternity leave women wouldn't feel the need to postpone or even forgo having children all together in the name of their careers. That would potenitally lead to more higher earning "smart" people having kids. I agree with some of this; it's in society's best interest to encourage successful (and I'm deliberately not defining that because IMHO successful people come in many shapes, types, sizes - from the "smart" to the less smart; for society's purposes "successful" is more about people who are overall contributors in a meaningful way to the group at large and that can be other than financial ways) people to reproduce. But I'm not sure a year's maternity leave necessarily does that. Right now, not having the year of maternity leave mostly impacts 1) people without family to help with childcare and 2) the mid-level and not yet successful. The higher earning "smart" people and the people on welfare are OK under the current system; it's just that gap in the middle that we'd be addressing. And of the gap in the middle it will be very much job dependent whether a year off is a good thing or not.
For vocations like nursing, it's a nice windfall to get a year off and the only issue is cost since nurses are already scheduled and treated as interchangeable for employers. Sounds like it's similar for programmers and some of the high tech jobs. Other vocations, like CFO aren't as plug and play. Try finding a temp CFO.
Not only that, but the issue that hasn't been addressed at all is the loss of skills that happens over that year off. This isn't a year spent furthering skills or expanding job related skills in any way - it's a year where frankly most of us actually lose brainpower. Although it's not PC to discuss, an entire year of parenting a newborn - although incredibly important to that family - actually decreases the caregiver's skills that s/he will bring back to the employer. In fields like programming and finance, it's hard to imagine that the loss wouldn't be obvious and a problem. When I worked for a Big Four type firm, most of the women had 3 months' maternity leave. About 2/3 - 3/4 of the women quit immediately after taking their free 3 months. The ones that came back all talked about how much brainpower they'd lost in that time off. Can't imagine what taking a year off would do. I suspect taking a year off would result in MORE not fewer, high level women just quitting because the skill loss would be too noticeable.
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gooddecisions
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Post by gooddecisions on Aug 12, 2015 9:03:35 GMT -5
Out of 105 women in my department, I can only recall 5 women taking maternity leave, myself included since I started at the company 15 years ago. I know of 2 men who took parental leave (one for an adopted child and one for a bio child) and 2 women who took adopted parental leave. It's all 100% paid for 12 weeks. That is not a dramatic number over the course of 15 years for over 150 people including men. All came back to the company after 12 weeks. I have direct reports myself and would fully support and encourage anyone adopting a child or having a child to take the leave and not worry or think about work- to focus on bonding with their new child. I was lucky to have a few supportive managers, although one was not very supportive. While I don't necessarily agree that anything should be government mandated, I think it's great if a company wants to sweeten the pot with a generous parental leave policy. And maybe it's does not come at such a dramatic cost as people think it might.
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yogiii
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Post by yogiii on Aug 12, 2015 9:07:44 GMT -5
For some tech jobs just the ramp up of company knowledge itself is long. So even a year off being a brain dead Mom, you still retain all of that and more. I don't know, my first day back it was like I never left. I spent a day or two getting up to speed and that was it. New hires are a lot more challenging to integrate.
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milee
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Post by milee on Aug 12, 2015 9:11:57 GMT -5
How many more do we need to add to the list of things the child-free subsidize for those that have children? There is already significant preference in the tax code, there has to be a limit. So, you don't want Americans to have a decent replacement birth level? You'll have to import immigrants from the third world. Which demographic would you like a huge influx of? Pakistani? Chinese? Middle Eastern? Doesn't Canada already do a form of this? In college, I had a friend from China whose family desperately wanted to emigrate to America. From what I could see of her, they'd be exactly the type of people we would all WANT to immigrate to our country - honest, intelligent, hard working, successful business owners and nice people. But their chances of getting one of the lottery type immigration chances for America were slim to none, so they were going to instead immigrate to Canada since for some reason the requirements were lower/different. IMHO, that was America's loss and Canada's gain.
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yogiii
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Post by yogiii on Aug 12, 2015 9:12:36 GMT -5
Something I could get on board with is companies loosening their existing policies for sick, vacation, PTO time. For instance, I can only carry over 40 hours. It would be nice if in anticipation of eventually having kids I was allowed to bank more of my PTO over the years such that I could have used it at the time of birth. When I had my first, I had already been working 8 years, if for instance I could have saved a week a year and had 8 weeks banked to use at that time it would have been helpful. This could be extended to everyone and in theory would only cost the company the salary increases of the employee.
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NomoreDramaQ1015
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Post by NomoreDramaQ1015 on Aug 12, 2015 9:14:27 GMT -5
I suspect taking a year off would result in MORE not fewer, high level women just quitting because the skill loss would be too noticeable.
That is something I hadn't thought about and you're right there are fields where things move so fast that a year out of the workforce is going to leave you in the dust.
FWIW I don't think a year's leave would work for everyone, you're still going to have to weigh your options accordingly.
What I am wondering is if just the OPTION would encourage women to keep going in their careers and have kids rather than feel lke they have to choose one or the other. Like any other employer perk you're going to have some hiccups with it, but that doesn't automatically mean it's going to become a free for all either.
I am interested to see what happens with NetFlix and Google over time.
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yogiii
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Post by yogiii on Aug 12, 2015 9:18:34 GMT -5
I think it will work well for them. Most of the women I know in tech want to continue working.
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NomoreDramaQ1015
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Post by NomoreDramaQ1015 on Aug 12, 2015 9:21:32 GMT -5
I'm really interested to see how paternity leave shakes out. That's pretty much non-existent even though men do have the rights to it under FMLA.
At UNMC they only allow men to use 3 weeks sick/vacation and the other 9 have to be unpaid. I can use up to 8 weeks and the other 4 would be unpaid.
When DH worked at Tyson they made it very clear they'd make his life miserable if he dared to take advantage of FMLA leave. He could take his one week of vacation and then his butt better be at work.
His new company is similar. They grant three days paternity leave and he can then use his 2 weeks vacation if he has it otherwise he better be back at work.
So I am excited to see what comes from offering men paternity leave in terms of the workforce and parental duties.
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