22 ms·

American Express will give all parents 20 weeks of paid leave

175 points by codegeek 10y ago

nunez 10y ago
Their policy is quite generous. Not only does it also apply to men, but they'll also chip in for parents wanting to adopt: > And employees who wish to have a child will receive up to $35,000 for adoption or surrogacy for up to two children. Congrats to AMEX employees!
- run4yourlives2 10y ago
  It's not generous, it's normal for a first world nation, and has been for about 15 years now. It's the US that is really, really lagging behind here. And with many corporations multi-national, Americans should really be asking themselves why that is.
  - rtkwe 10y ago
    It's generous in that it's in no way required of them and is way beyond what all but a handful of companies in the US provide.
  - alkonaut 10y ago
    The US is special in having social benefits that are so poor that Companies has to provide this. I get 240 days with varying amounts of pay but it's tax money - my employer doesn't pay this. Same if my kid is sick, or am. Tax money, not my employer ensures I get that paid.
randomgyatwork 10y ago
In Canada every family gets 52 weeks of 55% pay. This 'progress' is behind the rest of the world, sure its a good innovation or whatever, but why is the USA miles behind the rest of the world in this regard? Parents being around for their kids is important.
- cloakandswagger 10y ago
  Want to spend time with your kids? That's fine, just don't expect to get paid for it. Here's my all American take on this: you made the choice to have kids. Don't expect companies to subsidize your child-rearing efforts, we owe you nothing.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - runjake 10y ago
    The tone and lack of compassion in this comment reminds of that line from The Big Lebowski: "You're not wrong Walter. You're just an asshole."
    - martythemaniak 10y ago
      He's actually both wrong and an asshole. He might only appear right if you take a look at the world in a very narrow and short-term way. Ie, he can only think of children as children, rather than the adults who will sustain society once he is old and (even more) feeble-minded.
  - criddell 10y ago
    Here's my American take on this: if enough people want this to happen, it should happen. This is a democracy after all. And why do you say "we owe you nothing". You aren't a company, you're an individual.
    - 36bydesign 10y ago
      You must not have heard that corporations are individuals who pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps with only hard work and the power of the American Dream(tm).
    - cookiecaper 10y ago
      We're a republic, and it's precisely to prevent unfair outcomes like the one you're proposing. It's not good policy just because most people want it. The thing is that in America, there is still a barrier between the private and public sectors. While we obviously like perks like this, we don't believe that it's the government's place to mandate it. As we can see by many companies in the United States willfully offering such perks without legal mandate, companies are willing to make these accommodations on their own if they feel it will benefit their position in the market by allowing them to attract better talent. Companies that can't afford this will be at a market disadvantage, but they won't have to be afraid to hire the workers they need when they're growing because the law would force them to pay out half of the employee's salary for up to a year without being able to derive any productive benefit from that outlay. The most American thing about America is "it's a free country". That means that unless there is a vast social cost with allowing a certain behavior, it should be legal and people should be allowed to prosper or fail on the basis of their own choices rather than governmental policy that states "we know what's best for you".
revelation 10y ago
It's American Express, their money is made by a bunch of servers in racks, they could put half of their staff on paid leave for an entire quarter and the numbers would be unchanged.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- chipperyman573 10y ago
  Do you know what website you're on right now?
  - revelation 10y ago
    It used to be a website where people posed useful counterpoints instead of redundant rhetorical insulting questions. Of course the ability of a company like AMEX to offer these benefits hinges directly on the fact that a large number of their employees are non-essential to the value producing process.
- user5994461 10y ago
  Despite the downvotes. I do think there is a bit of truth in there. These payments companies do have a good income and they can afford to pay stuff for employees. Corollary: Go work for companies with loads of cash. They usually have better conditions :D
mabbo 10y ago
Every now and then I wonder if I should have stayed in the USA rather than coming back to Canada. I could have made a lot more money. Then someone like you says something like that, and I breath a big sigh of relief. Thanks, I was due for one of those.
- Dylan16807 10y ago
  That attitude is not US-specific. Don't be a jerk.
  - xyzzy_plugh 10y ago
    Sure, but the grandparent's comment is.
    - Dylan16807 10y ago
      Doesn't matter. Saying you left the US to avoid a certain attitude that is not special to the US is nonsense and insulting to the group as a whole. It would be different if mabbo was specifically trying to avoid that single person, but that's not the case.
      - mabbo 10y ago
        I left the US for many reasons, but one of them was that the "fuck you, got mine" attitude permeates US culture, and as a result becomes law. Not all Americans feel that way, but enough do that the idea of a single-payer health-care system is unthinkable. The idea of a person earning anything more than market-rate wages leads people to protest against the notion, to get angry about a livable minimum wage. It's not special to the US, certainly. But America is where such attitudes are considered normal.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- dang 10y ago
  Please don't react to a comment with a bad thing in it by turning that into the entire subject and going one worse yourself. That's the opposite of civil, substantive discussion. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13160679 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13160679 and marked it off-topic.
mathattack 10y ago
Enormously positive message. I hate that I have to recruit against them! The real question is will men be able to take the 20 weeks without their mid-management holding it against them. If someone in the C suite takes 20 weeks, then it will be culturally ok.
- lb1lf 10y ago
  We had this exact same discussion at my workplace (Large, UK-owned engineering multinational) a while ago; turned out a lot of people expected long leaves to have a detrimental effect on their career, but no-one had anything except assumption to go on. My own experience (working in Scandinavia) suggest that at least around here, career and leave is mostly a non-issue. I am currently staying at home with our nine-month-old daughter; my wife started working again when she was seven months old. I am now on paid leave until May next, and have the following observations: a) While my leave is of a slightly unusual duration (Father normally takes 10 weeks of leave or so - not 28 as I did), it is not unheard of. My line manager actually claims to prefer longer leaves, and I believe him. Reason? Much simpler to plan when you know employee such-and-such will be off work for, say, six months rather than just a couple of months. You might even get away with grabbing a temporary replacement from another department or a temp agency, whereas if I had a shorter leave, he'd just be told to split my work load on my colleagues and stop whining until I was back in the lab. b) To the extent that the top brass ever talks to their minions, anecdotal evidence suggests envy more than derision. My leaves (this being the third one) has come up in conversation with executives on a couple of occasions, and response has been more along the lines of 'I wish I could get away with doing that!' or 'Good for you, I wouldn't last a month!' than 'WTF?' Heck, during my previous leave, I was even promoted in my absence! (A minor one, but still...) c) My male colleagues are supportive, though most choose shorter leaves. The most skepticism has come from female colleagues - who, while amused that I take as much leave as I do, worry about what my wife really thinks about it - after all, society is biased towards females taking care of infants, the first year or two of their lives traditionally being seen as the mother's domain. (No-one has voiced any concerns about the children, though - only about my wife...)
  - azernik 10y ago
dharmon 10y ago
This is a great step for what's really a sad state of affairs in the US. My wife and I like to "joke" (it's not really funny) that we know enough to not take a puppy or kitten away from its mother before 8 weeks, yet we make human mothers go back to work after 6 weeks. And that's in CA, other states have lower minimums, or none at all. To those who don't understand parental leave: it is self-evident that child-bearing is a necessary condition for the continuation of society. We also know that time spent with parents, the mother in particular, during that first year is super important for both mental and physical well-being. Just like we subsidize public schools because we recognize the importance of education for society, we should be happy to "pay for" parental leave.
- Moshe_Silnorin 10y ago
  >To those who don't understand parental leave: it is self-evident that child-bearing is a necessary condition for the continuation of society. I like the "children are public goods" explanation for why the birth rate is declining. We could address this by subsidizing maternal leave or childcare services. From Augustus to modern Japan such incentives have proven pretty ineffective, as they don't scale with the wealth of the parents. Giving parents some percentage of their children's tax revenue would. This policy has the unfortunate characteristic of trigging an intense moral disgust reaction in all who hear it, including me when I first thought of it, so perhaps is best left untried. But then again, if catholics can give 10 percent to God, atheists can give 10 percent to their parents, who are, after all, their creators.
  - azernik 10y ago
    The issue with Japan isn't that maternal services are ineffective; it's that they're both underfunded (both shortages and high costs are common), and insufficient to overcome the other penalties that Japanese society imposes on working mothers.
  - Naritai 10y ago
    I'd like to see a citation that subsidized childcare is ineffective. Here, for a counterpoint, is one saying that subsidized childcare _does_ increase birthrate (note, incidentally, that this comes from WSJ, which is not normally a big proponent of government programs): http://blogs.wsj.com/juggle/2011/04/27/child-care-helps-boost-fertility/ http://blogs.wsj.com/juggle/2011/04/27/child-care-helps-boos...
gaur 10y ago
Yet again, people who have family responsibilities through no fault of their own (e.g., taking care of a sick parent or sibling) are ignored while companies fawn over people who (largely) choose to pop out more mouths to feed. I'm not saying parental leave is bad, but it's entirely eclipsed the other reasons why someone might need to take time off work to help family. Saying "I want 20 weeks paid leave and $35,000 to provide hospice care for my brother" would probably result in derision and maybe a pink slip at many companies, even ones that have generous parental leave.
- run4yourlives2 10y ago
  Why would you assume that? In Canada and most of Europe the same system pays for both these types of care. Neither have any real negative affects on companies because: 1. All ee's have the same payroll tax rate, regardless. 2. All companies are subject to the same limitations of the leaves. Parental care is more popular because it affects more people overall, but compassionate care will likely grow as boomers age. (I have no idea how this comment struck such a nerve... all it does is point out that compassionate care leaves are also the norm for the first world. It seems some people are really wedded to their ideology, even here.)
- draw_down 10y ago
  > Saying "I want 20 weeks paid leave and $35,000 to provide hospice care for my brother" would probably result in derision and maybe a pink slip at many companies, even ones that have generous parental leave. Well, that's bad! But I'm not sure why the solution should be to discontinue offering parental leave.
  - gaur 10y ago
    > I'm not sure why the solution should be to discontinue offering parental leave. I'm not sure where you got the idea that I'm suggesting that solution. In fact, I explicitly said "I'm not saying parental leave is bad".
    - CobrastanJorji 10y ago
clifanatic 10y ago
My kids were born 11 and 13 years ago... can I get a job there and take those 40 weeks retroactively?
cylinder 10y ago
Not a solution. Leaving it up to massive cashed up corporations only isn't fair. It hurts small businesses who cannot pay this. It needs to be mandated at the government level, means tested and subsidized. One more advantage to mega corporations and one more weakness for small business, add it next to the health insurance clusterf*. You also need a huge cultural change in the American workplace, where people act like an employee taking time off will crash the whole company. Theyve hardly even heard of maternity leave contracts here.
PrimalDual 10y ago
I read a couple of comments that say this is a step in the right direction to reverse the demographic trend in most developed countries of decreased fertility. I don't think that we will ever be able to compensate a couple and mother in particular for the cost of bearing children simply because we have made child rearing so expensive. I am not talking about education or housing costs but rather the opportunity cost. I don't think there is any way to adequately compensate couples for the loss in career opportunities and wages that they forgoe by choosing to instead spend time raising children. The unfortunate thing is that the more financially capable a couple is to raise children the less likely they are to do so probably because of the increased opportunity cost. I am not sure even the most generous maternity leave policies will be able to fix that.
synicalx 10y ago
Kids are great, future of humanity and all that (at least some of them), but I cannot wrap my head around why businesses should have to fund them directly. I could understand subsidising this in some other way - maybe tax breaks/refunds, or banks providing more lucrative savings/investment options for future parents. I get that people want everything, and they want it yesterday. They also don't want to have to make choices, and certainly don't want to have to plan too far ahead. But really, if you can't survive on one income for a year, then you're not financially secure enough to support one or more children. The problem that paid parental leave is trying to solve isn't a short-term money problem, it's a long-term, generation-wide pattern of financial irresponsibility. The old 'teach a man to fish' adage sums this up pretty nicely I think. I'm genuinely in favour of supporting parents and encouraging people to have babies, after all I'm going to need someone to sponge bath me after I soil myself and forget who I am when I'm 80. I just don't understand why this is considered the 'right' way to do it.

175 points by codegeek 10y ago

nunez 10y ago

Their policy is quite generous. Not only does it also apply to men, but they'll also chip in for parents wanting to adopt: > And employees who wish to have a child will receive up to $35,000 for adoption or surrogacy for up to two children. Congrats to AMEX employees!

run4yourlives2 10y ago
It's not generous, it's normal for a first world nation, and has been for about 15 years now. It's the US that is really, really lagging behind here. And with many corporations multi-national, Americans should really be asking themselves why that is.
- rtkwe 10y ago
  It's generous in that it's in no way required of them and is way beyond what all but a handful of companies in the US provide.
- alkonaut 10y ago
  The US is special in having social benefits that are so poor that Companies has to provide this. I get 240 days with varying amounts of pay but it's tax money - my employer doesn't pay this. Same if my kid is sick, or am. Tax money, not my employer ensures I get that paid.

randomgyatwork 10y ago

In Canada every family gets 52 weeks of 55% pay. This 'progress' is behind the rest of the world, sure its a good innovation or whatever, but why is the USA miles behind the rest of the world in this regard? Parents being around for their kids is important.

cloakandswagger 10y ago
Want to spend time with your kids? That's fine, just don't expect to get paid for it. Here's my all American take on this: you made the choice to have kids. Don't expect companies to subsidize your child-rearing efforts, we owe you nothing.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- runjake 10y ago
  The tone and lack of compassion in this comment reminds of that line from The Big Lebowski: "You're not wrong Walter. You're just an asshole."
  - martythemaniak 10y ago
    He's actually both wrong and an asshole. He might only appear right if you take a look at the world in a very narrow and short-term way. Ie, he can only think of children as children, rather than the adults who will sustain society once he is old and (even more) feeble-minded.
- criddell 10y ago
  Here's my American take on this: if enough people want this to happen, it should happen. This is a democracy after all. And why do you say "we owe you nothing". You aren't a company, you're an individual.
  - 36bydesign 10y ago
    You must not have heard that corporations are individuals who pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps with only hard work and the power of the American Dream(tm).
  - cookiecaper 10y ago
    We're a republic, and it's precisely to prevent unfair outcomes like the one you're proposing. It's not good policy just because most people want it. The thing is that in America, there is still a barrier between the private and public sectors. While we obviously like perks like this, we don't believe that it's the government's place to mandate it. As we can see by many companies in the United States willfully offering such perks without legal mandate, companies are willing to make these accommodations on their own if they feel it will benefit their position in the market by allowing them to attract better talent. Companies that can't afford this will be at a market disadvantage, but they won't have to be afraid to hire the workers they need when they're growing because the law would force them to pay out half of the employee's salary for up to a year without being able to derive any productive benefit from that outlay. The most American thing about America is "it's a free country". That means that unless there is a vast social cost with allowing a certain behavior, it should be legal and people should be allowed to prosper or fail on the basis of their own choices rather than governmental policy that states "we know what's best for you".

revelation 10y ago

It's American Express, their money is made by a bunch of servers in racks, they could put half of their staff on paid leave for an entire quarter and the numbers would be unchanged.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
chipperyman573 10y ago
Do you know what website you're on right now?
- revelation 10y ago
  It used to be a website where people posed useful counterpoints instead of redundant rhetorical insulting questions. Of course the ability of a company like AMEX to offer these benefits hinges directly on the fact that a large number of their employees are non-essential to the value producing process.
user5994461 10y ago
Despite the downvotes. I do think there is a bit of truth in there. These payments companies do have a good income and they can afford to pay stuff for employees. Corollary: Go work for companies with loads of cash. They usually have better conditions :D

mabbo 10y ago

Every now and then I wonder if I should have stayed in the USA rather than coming back to Canada. I could have made a lot more money. Then someone like you says something like that, and I breath a big sigh of relief. Thanks, I was due for one of those.

Dylan16807 10y ago
That attitude is not US-specific. Don't be a jerk.
- xyzzy_plugh 10y ago
  Sure, but the grandparent's comment is.
  - Dylan16807 10y ago
    Doesn't matter. Saying you left the US to avoid a certain attitude that is not special to the US is nonsense and insulting to the group as a whole. It would be different if mabbo was specifically trying to avoid that single person, but that's not the case.
    - mabbo 10y ago
      I left the US for many reasons, but one of them was that the "fuck you, got mine" attitude permeates US culture, and as a result becomes law. Not all Americans feel that way, but enough do that the idea of a single-payer health-care system is unthinkable. The idea of a person earning anything more than market-rate wages leads people to protest against the notion, to get angry about a livable minimum wage. It's not special to the US, certainly. But America is where such attitudes are considered normal.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
dang 10y ago
Please don't react to a comment with a bad thing in it by turning that into the entire subject and going one worse yourself. That's the opposite of civil, substantive discussion. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13160679 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13160679 and marked it off-topic.

mathattack 10y ago

Enormously positive message. I hate that I have to recruit against them! The real question is will men be able to take the 20 weeks without their mid-management holding it against them. If someone in the C suite takes 20 weeks, then it will be culturally ok.

lb1lf 10y ago
We had this exact same discussion at my workplace (Large, UK-owned engineering multinational) a while ago; turned out a lot of people expected long leaves to have a detrimental effect on their career, but no-one had anything except assumption to go on. My own experience (working in Scandinavia) suggest that at least around here, career and leave is mostly a non-issue. I am currently staying at home with our nine-month-old daughter; my wife started working again when she was seven months old. I am now on paid leave until May next, and have the following observations: a) While my leave is of a slightly unusual duration (Father normally takes 10 weeks of leave or so - not 28 as I did), it is not unheard of. My line manager actually claims to prefer longer leaves, and I believe him. Reason? Much simpler to plan when you know employee such-and-such will be off work for, say, six months rather than just a couple of months. You might even get away with grabbing a temporary replacement from another department or a temp agency, whereas if I had a shorter leave, he'd just be told to split my work load on my colleagues and stop whining until I was back in the lab. b) To the extent that the top brass ever talks to their minions, anecdotal evidence suggests envy more than derision. My leaves (this being the third one) has come up in conversation with executives on a couple of occasions, and response has been more along the lines of 'I wish I could get away with doing that!' or 'Good for you, I wouldn't last a month!' than 'WTF?' Heck, during my previous leave, I was even promoted in my absence! (A minor one, but still...) c) My male colleagues are supportive, though most choose shorter leaves. The most skepticism has come from female colleagues - who, while amused that I take as much leave as I do, worry about what my wife really thinks about it - after all, society is biased towards females taking care of infants, the first year or two of their lives traditionally being seen as the mother's domain. (No-one has voiced any concerns about the children, though - only about my wife...)
- azernik 10y ago

dharmon 10y ago

This is a great step for what's really a sad state of affairs in the US. My wife and I like to "joke" (it's not really funny) that we know enough to not take a puppy or kitten away from its mother before 8 weeks, yet we make human mothers go back to work after 6 weeks. And that's in CA, other states have lower minimums, or none at all. To those who don't understand parental leave: it is self-evident that child-bearing is a necessary condition for the continuation of society. We also know that time spent with parents, the mother in particular, during that first year is super important for both mental and physical well-being. Just like we subsidize public schools because we recognize the importance of education for society, we should be happy to "pay for" parental leave.

Moshe_Silnorin 10y ago
>To those who don't understand parental leave: it is self-evident that child-bearing is a necessary condition for the continuation of society. I like the "children are public goods" explanation for why the birth rate is declining. We could address this by subsidizing maternal leave or childcare services. From Augustus to modern Japan such incentives have proven pretty ineffective, as they don't scale with the wealth of the parents. Giving parents some percentage of their children's tax revenue would. This policy has the unfortunate characteristic of trigging an intense moral disgust reaction in all who hear it, including me when I first thought of it, so perhaps is best left untried. But then again, if catholics can give 10 percent to God, atheists can give 10 percent to their parents, who are, after all, their creators.
- azernik 10y ago
  The issue with Japan isn't that maternal services are ineffective; it's that they're both underfunded (both shortages and high costs are common), and insufficient to overcome the other penalties that Japanese society imposes on working mothers.
- Naritai 10y ago
  I'd like to see a citation that subsidized childcare is ineffective. Here, for a counterpoint, is one saying that subsidized childcare _does_ increase birthrate (note, incidentally, that this comes from WSJ, which is not normally a big proponent of government programs): http://blogs.wsj.com/juggle/2011/04/27/child-care-helps-boost-fertility/ http://blogs.wsj.com/juggle/2011/04/27/child-care-helps-boos...

gaur 10y ago

Yet again, people who have family responsibilities through no fault of their own (e.g., taking care of a sick parent or sibling) are ignored while companies fawn over people who (largely) choose to pop out more mouths to feed. I'm not saying parental leave is bad, but it's entirely eclipsed the other reasons why someone might need to take time off work to help family. Saying "I want 20 weeks paid leave and $35,000 to provide hospice care for my brother" would probably result in derision and maybe a pink slip at many companies, even ones that have generous parental leave.

run4yourlives2 10y ago
Why would you assume that? In Canada and most of Europe the same system pays for both these types of care. Neither have any real negative affects on companies because: 1. All ee's have the same payroll tax rate, regardless. 2. All companies are subject to the same limitations of the leaves. Parental care is more popular because it affects more people overall, but compassionate care will likely grow as boomers age. (I have no idea how this comment struck such a nerve... all it does is point out that compassionate care leaves are also the norm for the first world. It seems some people are really wedded to their ideology, even here.)
draw_down 10y ago
> Saying "I want 20 weeks paid leave and $35,000 to provide hospice care for my brother" would probably result in derision and maybe a pink slip at many companies, even ones that have generous parental leave. Well, that's bad! But I'm not sure why the solution should be to discontinue offering parental leave.
- gaur 10y ago
  > I'm not sure why the solution should be to discontinue offering parental leave. I'm not sure where you got the idea that I'm suggesting that solution. In fact, I explicitly said "I'm not saying parental leave is bad".
  - CobrastanJorji 10y ago

clifanatic 10y ago

My kids were born 11 and 13 years ago... can I get a job there and take those 40 weeks retroactively?

cylinder 10y ago

Not a solution. Leaving it up to massive cashed up corporations only isn't fair. It hurts small businesses who cannot pay this. It needs to be mandated at the government level, means tested and subsidized. One more advantage to mega corporations and one more weakness for small business, add it next to the health insurance clusterf*. You also need a huge cultural change in the American workplace, where people act like an employee taking time off will crash the whole company. Theyve hardly even heard of maternity leave contracts here.

PrimalDual 10y ago

I read a couple of comments that say this is a step in the right direction to reverse the demographic trend in most developed countries of decreased fertility. I don't think that we will ever be able to compensate a couple and mother in particular for the cost of bearing children simply because we have made child rearing so expensive. I am not talking about education or housing costs but rather the opportunity cost. I don't think there is any way to adequately compensate couples for the loss in career opportunities and wages that they forgoe by choosing to instead spend time raising children. The unfortunate thing is that the more financially capable a couple is to raise children the less likely they are to do so probably because of the increased opportunity cost. I am not sure even the most generous maternity leave policies will be able to fix that.

synicalx 10y ago

Kids are great, future of humanity and all that (at least some of them), but I cannot wrap my head around why businesses should have to fund them directly. I could understand subsidising this in some other way - maybe tax breaks/refunds, or banks providing more lucrative savings/investment options for future parents. I get that people want everything, and they want it yesterday. They also don't want to have to make choices, and certainly don't want to have to plan too far ahead. But really, if you can't survive on one income for a year, then you're not financially secure enough to support one or more children. The problem that paid parental leave is trying to solve isn't a short-term money problem, it's a long-term, generation-wide pattern of financial irresponsibility. The old 'teach a man to fish' adage sums this up pretty nicely I think. I'm genuinely in favour of supporting parents and encouraging people to have babies, after all I'm going to need someone to sponge bath me after I soil myself and forget who I am when I'm 80. I just don't understand why this is considered the 'right' way to do it.