Yahoo Expands Maternity, Paternity Leave(nbcbayarea.com) |
Yahoo Expands Maternity, Paternity Leave(nbcbayarea.com) |
http://www.labour.gov.on.ca/english/es/pubs/guide/pregnancy.... http://www.servicecanada.gc.ca/eng/ei/types/maternity_parent...
Basically, in Ontario, mothers are eligible for 17 weeks of pregnancy leave. After giving birth, both parents are eligible for up to 37 weeks of parental leave.
This time is unpaid, but has no impact on your benefits, length of employment, seniority, etc. Many companies do pay for this time off, especially since the government employment insurance program will help if your weekly income drops below 40%.
The money helps significantly, but for me, it's more about the time. These are important and formative weeks during your child and family's development. A couple of my friends just had a baby, and I can see how much they cherish every moment they spend with him.
I won't be worrying about these kinds of benefits for a few more years, but it's still something that I view as important.
That said, good parental leave benefits are great for a different reason: very young children are a pain in the ass to take care of, which means that daycare providers charge a lot more until they're older.
This cannot be overstated. The first few moments/hours/days/weeks/months of your child's life (especially your first) are insanely awesome/frightening/joyous/exciting/sleep-depriving/stressful/fun/inspiring/just-freaking-cool.
It's not an experience I would want to miss for any reason. I'll probably never understand people who go back to work after a week or two.
No way. "Just" had baby, parents are barely surviving, often depressed. Cherish comes months later.
I think my wife only vaguely remembers the first three months.
With 100% (ish) pay you get 47 weeks total, with 80% you get 57 weeks. 9 weeks are reserved for the mother and 14 weeks (or it might be 12) are reserved for the father.
Paid leave from work for mothers of infants: Canada 50 weeks, Mexico 12 weeks, USA zero.
Paid leave from work for fathers of infants: Canada 35 weeks, Cuba 40 weeks, USA zero.
In Eastern European countries like Belarus, Ukraine, and Slovakia, mothers get 3 years paid leave – that’s 10 times more than what Yahoo is offering.
> "Under the new policy, mothers can take 16 weeks of paid leave with benefits, and fathers can take up to eight weeks"
Would that not be considered discriminatory?
After one year, I expected more in terms of results from Yahoo under Mayer's tenure. I'm not as close to it, but I just didn't see benefit and work policies as the difference between success and failure in the marketplace for Yahoo.
Now can we see some news about tech innovations by yahoo?
Also, lets say that you're a child adopted by a homosexual married couple and you only get 8 weeks. How is that fair to the adopted child versus 16 weeks for a birthed child?
Equality means treating people equally--including men and children.
For example, 16 weeks for a woman who adopts vs. 8 for a man who does exactly the same thing is just discriminatory.
Some recognition of the differences in experience and particularly in consequences are called for, I think. Because they exist.
All things aren't equal in this case. Child birth can be incredibly taxing on a woman's body. Some women would need more time to recover.
Now there is an equal metric regardless of the sex. Happy?
As others have stated, it would only be discriminatory if it was based on gender, but it's not - it's based on whether or not you had the physical toll of childbirth, as evident in the adoption v. birth difference for women.
It would be interesting to hear what the leave would be for a lesbian couple with one of the women giving birth. I would think 16/8 like a heterosexual couple, but that could get dicey depending on how the rule is worded.
So it would appear that such a claim is implicitly identifying a gender by excluding all of the other gender.
The extra 8 was paid for by the company's short term disability insurance policy, for a total of 16 weeks. Childbirth was deemed sufficient to trigger short term disability.
I imagine that's what happened here.
A larger point could be made that it's somewhat pointless to speculate about whether a policy is sexist when we're hearing a brief summary from a secondary source. A large aspect of this is how the policy is actually worded and carried out in practice.
USA has 33 times the population of Sweden so if it was solely a product of a political system I would expect at least one other "Silicon Valley".
Considering that the distance between the East Coast and the West Coast is the same as the distance between Sweden and Egypt, I assume a second "Silicon Valley" would be viable.
But that was not my point. My point was how low the barrier for "great benefits" where even for "spoiled" software engineers in Silicon Valley. Why not try to move the goal post a bit further?
Maybe something like the government covering 70% of the your away pay (capped, obviously), and giving the company 15% to go toward to whatever they chose (covering you more, hiring a temp, the bottom line, etc.) The size of the company could also be a factor on how large that payment is (the smaller the company, the larger the percentage).
Men could probably sue for employment discrimination in some jobs such as child care providers. But would anyone care?
Pay and benefits are enforced to be the same. In some states, car insurance companies are not even allowed to give different rates for men vs. women even though statistically women are less risky to insure.
The simplest way of removing this "hidden tax" on hiring women is to make the tax the same for men.
A proper policy would give equal maternal/paternal time off for both parents for either birth or adoption, and also have some sort of paid medical leave program in place for complicated pregnancies (and of course, all other medical problems).
Since a few years back there's a bonus for parents who split the leave equally, but it's going to take generations until everyone does it. (All of my peers do it, but they're university educated upper middle class that can afford it)
Anecdotally, lots of women in Italy have "difficult pregnancies" because the incentives are there for it. They're happy to have extra time off, and doctors, when in doubt, are not going to choose the riskier option.
Childbirth is not an injury. Childbirth is literally essential for society. Whatever extra profit that can be squeezed out of a new dad is meaningless next to the importance of equality and assistance to the new mother. Somehow I think our GDP will be ok.