14 ms·

How My Employer Put the “FML” in FMLA

• rdtsc 12y ago
  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.
  • deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  • jahnu 12y ago
    A thought from Jimmy Carter comes to mind. He said countries are not really 'democracies' or 'not democracies' but rather that democracy is either strong or weak. Similarly, one shouldn't say the USA is uncivilised but that some of it's civic institutions are weak in some ways. Additionally they do not uniformly share the same strengths and weaknesses across the entire country.
    • hderms 12y ago
      I think that's an enlightening way of looking at things, but doesn't quite bring the same shame as referring to ourselves as an uncivilized country. Perhaps if the national debate was about being a civilized country instead of framing it as 'socialism' we'd eventually be able to move into the modern era in the context of social policy.
  • kiba 12y ago
    All of which is based on your perception of reality, all of which comes from news. News are by definitions things that almost never happen. Define corruption level, quantify it, and then we can talk.
  • wil421 12y ago
    Its unfortunate that there are not laws preventing things like this from happening. Too many people in the US do not want the government to impose laws or regulations just because they oppose any government interference what so ever. Even if the interference will benefit everyone. People have a choice where they work. Had this happened to me I would be high tailing it out of there but professors dont have that luxury.
    • rdtsc 12y ago
      It is sad how people who would benefit most from it can easily be brainwashed to vote against it. This is summed best by the ironic "get your government out of my Medicare" slogan. It is not a real slogan but it is used as a joke to illustrate the underlying logic.
  • moconnor 12y ago
    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 12y ago
      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 12y ago
        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.
  • vlunkr 12y ago
    Uncivilized, really? We certainly have issues, but I think that's a bit much. Those are all very real problems, but for the most part our day to day lives are very civilized. And there are ways to fix these problems, it just isn't easy.
  • chrisBob 12y ago
    I strongly agree. Its interesting how the US chooses policies some times. The culture here is very different from most other civilized countries. Countries with no national paid maternity leave policy: US, Papua New Guinea, Suriname, and Liberia [1] Countries who have executed people in the past 25 years who were under 18 at the time of their crimes: The People's Republic of China (PRC), Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, the United States and Yemen. [2] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave (also noted elsewhere in the comments) [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment#Juvenile_offenders http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment#Juvenile_off... Admittedly this fact is cherry picked. The US has since changed the policy
• dailen 12y ago
  Ugh...that's heart wrenching :(
• atonse 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    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 12y ago
      Just a tiny nitpick - Arendt was a woman - Hannah Arendt to be more precise.
      • ep103 12y ago
        Updated, thanks!
    • RayVR 12y ago
      *she coined the term "banality of evil."
  • Pxtl 12y ago
    At the very least when dealing with monstrous policy, the correct thing to do is refer them to somebody who has the power to change the policy.
• jrs235 12y ago
  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.bc http://www.babycenter.com/0_maternity-leave-the-basics_449.b...
• jmount 12y ago
  Nasty treatment. And in many places you can't even attempt to bank the sick-leave in the first place.
  • LanceH 12y ago
    Or bank any leave at all. My current employer wipes vacation days on Jan 1.
    • CapitalistCartr 12y ago
      My experience with employers in general is use any benefit you accrue as soon as you reasonably can. Don't save stuff up; it makes you vulnerable to your employers incompetence or greed.
    • tgb 12y ago
      Aren't they generally required to pay you for accrued leave or is even that not required?
      • benjarrell 12y ago
        Usually depends on which state you are in. California I believe they are required to pay up to a certain number of hours.
      • jmount 12y ago
        (not a lawyer) I think in the US (oops, probably should have said California) generally accrued vacation has to be paid off (as it is accounted for at the time it is earned, but there may also be a cap which causes some to disappear). But sick days are not generally considered a benefit and avoid this. I imagine "flex time" is more complicated.
      • TheCoelacanth 12y ago
        In most states, that's not required.
      • Buttons840 12y ago
• cafard 12y ago
  There should a name and shame on this one. What is the university, and what does it think it is doing?
  • minimax 12y ago
    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.
    • asgard1024 12y ago
      Why not? Sometimes people desperately organize boycotts of institutions that they want to behave, but it never succeeds, because everyone needs at least one of the institutions (for example, everybody needs to be employed). I think maybe there could be a lottery and people could collectively agree and randomly single out one actor and boycott it for some time. That would force at least that one actor to care and enforce competition. Who cares about fairness, if everybody is guilty?
    • MrZongle2 12y ago
      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 12y ago
        Isn't that a decision for the author? Clearly she decided differently.
  • sp332 12y ago
    Actually, it's better without a name because it's a widespread problem. If she gave a name, people might think that it's an isolated incident.
  • eksith 12y ago
• PeterisP 12y ago
  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.
  • ceejayoz 12y ago
    Yup. http://pbs.twimg.com/media/BnDi8KlIIAA750F.png http://pbs.twimg.com/media/BnDi8KlIIAA750F.png US provides zero weeks paid maternity leave. Pakistan provides 12. Venezuela manages 18. Canada does 50. Per Wikipedia, the US joins Papua New Guinea, Suriname, and Liberia as the only countries to not provide paid parental leave of any kind.
    • jnsaff2 12y ago
      Estonia has 78 weeks of paid Maternity OR Paternity leave, parents can choose which one stays home and gets to take care of the baby.
      • darkstar999 12y ago
        What? That's ridiculous. Does the employer pay or is it government assistance?
        • gambiting 12y ago
          In the entire EU you can take unlimited sick leave(which does not take away anything from your mandatory 25 days of paid holidays), and the employer has to pay only for the first 30 days - after that, the government continues paying your salary(it might be 75% of the full salary in some countries). If you are sick for long periods of time(>2-3 months) they might require you visit an approved doctor, otherwise they stop paying. The same rules apply to maternity/paternity leave.
• supercanuck 12y ago
  I wonder how being a woman at Netflix and other such companies with their unlimited vacation policy is like .
  • _dark_matter_ 12y ago
    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 12y ago
      Looks like Californians are lucky enough to get 16-18 weeks paid maternity leave. http://siliconvalleymamas.com/2013/03/understanding-maternity-leave-in-california-2013-edition/ http://siliconvalleymamas.com/2013/03/understanding-maternit...
    • supercanuck 12y ago
      For PFL in California, the maximum is $1,000 something per week and you get the money on a Bank of America Debit Card.
• CapitalistCartr 12y ago
  I wonder how a simple law stating that "sick leave" can be used for having a baby would work for this.
• chiph 12y ago
  Escalate.
• pg_is_a_butt 12y ago
  how about you quit crying and stand up for yourself and tell them how it is, and if they don't like it, they can go fuck themselves and raise their demon spawn on their own terms. you acted like a pussy and got treated like a pussy.
• gambiting 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    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.
    • masklinn 12y ago
      > Outside of the Valley and New York, where there's less competition for talent, there are many companies that deduct sick days from vacation. That's a brand new level of fucked up behavior, holy hell.
    • zten 12y ago
      I have to use PTO for sick days in SF. Oops.
      • michaelochurch 12y ago
        If you're in SF, you have no excuse not to get out. Companies that make you use PTO for sick days have given up on playing against the market and are now playing against their employees. Avoid, avoid, avoid.
    • viewer5 12y ago
      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?
• shawabawa3 12y ago
  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
  • maerF0x0 12y ago
    IIRC many employers will stop paying you, then it starts to be a "short term" disability. And then you go through that process, which often includes X days unpaid as a sort of "deductible"
  • ceejayoz 12y ago
    > I find the whole notion of "sick days" and accruing them bizarre. Agreed. Companies here in the US are pretty stingy with them, too, causing people to come to work sick where they get everyone else sick too. > What happens if you're sick but don't have enough sick days saved? Are you fired? Stop getting payed? You stop getting paid and can be fired if the company wishes. Some companies are subject to FMLA, which protects your job for 12 weeks of unpaid sick leave. Its requirements rule out small businesses and new employees, though: > In order to be eligible for FMLA leave, an employee must have been at the business at least 12 months, and worked at least 1,250 hours over the past 12 months, and work at a location where the company employs 50 or more employees within 75 miles.
    • learc83 12y ago
      I really think that a minimum number of sick days should be mandatory as a public health measure. The amount of lost productivity caused by sick people infecting their coworkers per year has to be immense.
      • dsr_ 12y ago
        If you're in Massachusetts, please vote Yes on Question Four next week. Question Four mandates that employees who work for employers having eleven or more employees would earn and use up to 40 hours of paid sick time per calendar year, while employees working for smaller employers would earn and use up to 40 hours of unpaid sick time per calendar year. Without it, there are people making your food who are working while sick.
• michaelochurch 12y ago
  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.
  • scrollaway 12y ago
    https://xkcd.com/603/ https://xkcd.com/603/ You guys need education, not eugenics.
    • michaelochurch 12y ago
      I'm not saying that anyone should be prohibited from reproducing. I'm saying that we should encourage (or, at least, avoid discouraging) thoughtful and intelligent people, through economic means, to have children if they want to do so, and not to wait until they're in their mid-40s and have their careers worked out, but might be infertile. I know intelligent people who don't want to have any kids, and I know smart people who want to have 4 or 5 kids. The latter set should be able to do so without having to either (a) make $1 million per year or (b) have a cousin who works at a top college and who can "fix" admissions to schools. Also, this isn't about some classist fear. I'm arguing that we should help intelligent people in the working and middle classes. (The rich don't need any help.) The problem is that, even when you control for social class, fertility and IQ seem to be negatively correlated. Even if you take genes out of the picture, it's still the case that thoughtless, stupid people make bad parents. Even if there's no adverse differential in genetics, there's still the risk of one in culture.
• dmm 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    "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?
    • JoeAltmaier 12y ago
      Every decent behavior anybody has in public can be explained by 'holding a gun to their head' by the same chain of logic. You spit on the sidewalk, you get fined. And so on. This holds the average citizen in contempt, and I reject the whole sophomoric chain of 'causation'. People behave because they're civilized and orderly and want their community to thrive. So lets get the conversation back to, how do we want to maintain a standard of living that benefits us all. Through taxes and rules and institutions, like we have always done.
    • mturmon 12y ago
      I wouldn't kill my mother for that. But fortunately I wouldn't have to, because she pays her taxes. And is proud to, last I checked. As you can tell, I reject your whole line of thinking. It makes a bunch of assumptions to carry the situation to extremes, and then innocently asks, "you wouldn't want that extreme outcome, would you?". The same argument can be made against any form of regulation whatsoever.
• humanrebar 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    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!
    • humanrebar 12y ago
      I agree that paternity leave should be more generous and universal, but there a physiological reasons (tenderness, hormonal changes, breastfeeding, etc.) why mothers may not be able to work. I can recognize that while still thinking the entire family, and society as a whole, is shortchanged by undervaluing the contributions of fathers to families with newborns. While some legal reforms are probably needed, I don't see why employers shouldn't be called to task for their policies in these areas. If corporate leaders can be called to task for off-the-cuff statements, why can't they be called to task for something with such an immediate and obvious impact? EDIT: I'll also add a coda here to point out that most pregnancies are unplanned. Expecting new mothers and fathers to have prescience with respect to parental leave is unrealistic at best.
    • eli 12y ago
      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 12y ago
        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.
• tragomaskhalos 12y ago
  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.
• minimax 12y ago
  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
  • Domenic_S 12y ago
    "Zero paid leave" is not quite true, it's left to the individual States to decide that. CA, DC, NJ, HI, NY and PR each have paid family leave. If your state isn't in that list, complain to your state government. It's still complicated though. I took paternity leave last year in CA and it was like this: there's a 7-day waiting period, so the first week was straight PTO. Then PFL pays 55% of salary up to I think $1k/week, so you make up the difference with partial PTO. That can go on for up to 6 weeks; if memory serves I took 4 weeks total off. All in all not terrible. I realize I'm fortunate to live in CA where there is a PFL policy, and to work for a company that's with-it enough to process these claims quickly and competently. I truly feel for others like the woman in the article.
    • rhc2104 12y ago
      To add, you get more time off for disability if you're a birth mother in California. http://www.edd.ca.gov/disability/FAQ_DI_Pregnancy.htm http://www.edd.ca.gov/disability/FAQ_DI_Pregnancy.htm So from 4 weeks before birth to 6 weeks after, you can also get 55% of salary, up to $1,075/week. Then you can take on the additional 6 weeks of paid family leave.
    • 12y ago
• diafygi 12y ago
  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.
• computerjunkie 12y ago
  Its disappointing to see this happen in 2014.
• onion2k 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    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 12y ago
      Absolutely, good employers do much more than the minimum. But that's true in the US too.
• StronglyTyped 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    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).
• themoonbus 12y ago
  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.
• mcfunley 12y ago
  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.)
• hderms 12y ago
  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.
• gknoy 12y ago
  How is this not bounds for a lawsuit?? I suspect that had she mentioned a lawyer, they might have been more accomodating.
• laichzeit0 12y ago
  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/basic-guide-to-maternity-leave http://www.labour.gov.za/DOL/legislation/acts/basic-guides/b...
  • mratzloff 12y ago
    > It's a sad shame, but there are people that really abuse sick leave and the rest of us have to pay for it. Are you saying some mothers are abusing sick leave to care for their newborns?
  • CanSpice 12y ago
    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 12y ago
      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.
• at-fates-hands 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    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 12y ago
      >>> 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.
  • seestheday 12y ago
    As a parent from Canada I feel so sorry for parents in the US. That you consider only 12 weeks as "abuse" is even more depressing.
• serve_yay 12y ago
  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.
• chrisBob 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    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 12y ago
      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-accommodation/ http://www.bu.edu/academics/policies/childbirth-and-adoption...
• gglitch 12y ago
  Genuinely curious - where are the markets-should-be-completely-unregulated guys on this?
  • coryfklein 12y ago
    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 12y ago
      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 12y ago
        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?
• zhte415 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    Wow, that's a really interesting way to set the payment level.
• tortos123 12y ago
  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!
• mareofnight 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    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.
• jackmaney 12y ago
  The older I get, the more disappointed I tend to become with my country.
• eli 12y ago
  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.
• yardie 12y ago
  > 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.
• sipsop 12y ago
  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).
• joesmo 12y ago
  This seems like another way to discriminate against and hurt women.
  • astrange 12y ago
    Your comment can only describe half the situation, insofar as it takes two people to start a family.
    • joesmo 12y ago
      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.
• ShaneOG 12y ago
  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.
• notastartup 12y ago
  What fucking company is this? They are just asking for free publicity.
• mikestew 12y ago
  "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 12y ago
    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 12y ago
      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.
• drderidder 12y ago
  "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
• kclay 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    > 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 12y ago
      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.
• Spooky23 12y ago
  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.
• therzathegza 12y ago
  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.
• vampirechicken 12y ago
  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.
• pnathan 12y ago
  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.
• AndrewKemendo 12y ago
  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.
  • Domenic_S 12y ago
    > Luckily my wife is a stay at home mom and we could pull it off with one income. The hidden gem right here. Build your life so that you can function well on one income (even if both partners work) and you won't be restricted by a government's policy.
  • lutorm 12y ago
• paulddraper 12y ago
  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 12y ago
  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.
• amaterasu 12y ago
  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...
• udkl 12y ago
  Isn't this a case of a bad HR rather than of 'feminism' ?