Attitudes Shift on Paid Leave: Dads Sue, Too | Hacker News Reader

Attitudes Shift on Paid Leave: Dads Sue, Too

nytimes.com

45 pointspetethomas57 comments

"In his complaint, Mr. Ayanna cited a “macho” culture that “encourages male associates and partners to fulfill the stereotypical male role of ceding family responsibilities to women.”"

Ah yes, the good old macho culture that has been disfiguring men emotionally and physically for longer than I know. The macho culture is probably one reason why we don't live as long as women do, since we consider going to the doctor to be expressing weakness, which is verboten. Aside from that aspect of the issue, it's no secret that worker rights barely exist in the US, and a strong parental leave policy enshrined into law would massively help both men and women.

Getting real worker rights in the US be like pulling teeth from a stone (sic), though. We don't even have sick days by law-- seems like those should come first.

A quick list of things we direly need which we don't have:

1. Paid sick days

2. Paid vacation days

3. Hard limit of hours worked per week

4. Overtime pay for salaried employees

5. Paid parental leave

6. Control over scheduling of hours

7. A realistic minimum wage or some other way of guaranteeing survival of the poor

8. Paid childcare

I'm curious... when you travel do you pay extra for services you don't receive? For example, if you are going to stay in a hotel for five days, do you pay for seven?

Labor isn't the same as other commodities, and shouldn't be treated in the same fashion.

For instance, you don't go to the store, take a can of WD-40 home, use it, then go back to the store to pay for the can.

Labor (unjustly, but not hugely so) is given to employers on credit from workers. You work a week (giving the commodity of labor away for free during that week because you have no choice in the matter) then get paid afterward.

The point of this push for labor rights is that laborers aren't being fairly compensated in a variety of dimensions for the work they've done.

You said it! Contractors have it worse. You typically get paid net-60, you're actually working for a quarter for nothing and hoping the company is still solvent to pay you. E.g. start working Jan 1st; bill for the month on Jan 31st. Net-60 means getting paid for that April 1st. You work 90 days on hope.

That's pretty bad. Reminds me of Amazon's payment schemes for authors. Month ends, your pay is marked off-- and the check is in your bank account long, long after, allowing them to have more liquidity at your expense.

> For instance, you don't go to the store, take a can of WD-40 home, use it, then go back to the store to pay for the can.

That's true, but may have more to do with an unwillingness to track a squillion IOUs for individual cans of WD-40 than a sign of a fundamental difference. Were you a company buying a pallet of the stuff, things would be different.

(That said, if I pay by credit card it'll be at least a month before the card issuer thinks about charging me interest, so things aren't so very different as an individual, either...)

>Labor isn't the same as other commodities,

Depends on the relationship. Instead of a hotel, say you decided that you enjoy a massage and after some research you find a license therapist in your area and you have a trial massage and, having appreciated said massage, you decide to establish twice weekly massages.

So you talk with the therapist and establish a nice $125/hour rate for them to come to your house every Tuesday and Thursday at 2:00pm for an hour massage. Having negotiated a rate, you agree that this is an ongoing deal until one or the other of you decides to cancel it.

Now, you've agreed to effectively $1,000/month salary for this person. Are you really going to go ahead and pay them the agreed upon $1,000/month even though they:

a) catch a virus and are unable to come for two weeks.

b) take a vacation to Pittsburgh and are not going to be there next Thursday.

c) have a child and aren't going to be coming to give your massage for the next six, eight, or ten weeks?

d) have signed up extra clients and will reach sixty hours by Thursday morning, so they won't be able to provide their Thursday afternoon or Friday appointments due to hard limits on overtime.

e) now that they have a kid, you're going to pay an extra $10 per session for child care.

For some reason, my gut feeling is that you're not going to do any of those things and instead put it on the therapist to manage their business and accept that they will get paid for services rendered and nothing else.

I bet you don't have kids, or aren't currently thinking through the logistics of having them. Your mind games just don't apply equally to labor.

I'm curious about what your argument is, since "think about having children though" and stating an opposite position doesn't lead anywhere.

Kids have to be picked up at 3pm or, if you want to keep them for the whole day in school, at 5pm. Unless you hire a nanny, 5pm becomes a hard stop for you, no matter what start-up life you dream of having. Then, during the week-end, your guilt of not spending too much time during the week will eat at you and you will try and to use most of the free time with your kid(s).

Or, you can decide not to get involved too much with your kinds, eventually shipping them off to a boarding school. even for that, you have to pay dearly.

Absolutely! The hotels I usually stay at have:

* a business center with pc/printer/fax machine

* a gym

* a 'meet-and-greet' with complimentary beverages

* an inexplicable twice a day cleaning schedule

* tennis/basketball courts

* shuttle service

* cable television

All of which I do not use, but are definitely included in their overhead costs and passed on to me, the consumer.

I think a "living wage" is a somewhat ill defined, but also overly political concept for several reasons. One, what does it mean? Does it mean allowing you to get by at a minimum level, or, does that mean allowing you to have an upper lower class income?

Also if we mean it to allow upper lower class to lower middle class, then we could see consequences such as: people not caring about education and higher skills development (blue collar union job mentality) no big deal by yet could strand these people later. Second, it pushes lower skilled people out of the labor force. Why hire someone who barely went to highschool when you can get a liberal arts grad at that wage?

"Defining" something is a fuzzy concept. Do we mean trying to find an obvious and reasonable meaning for it (like "get by at a minimum level") or are we trying to make it appear a worrying and unjustified excess with important and negative unintended consequences?

Those two consequences you predict are entirely contradictory. Less educated people will be pushed out of the workforce, but for some reason people will also disregard education that would increase their employability? Say what?

Living wage does have a specific definition - it is a minimum subsistence wage, that takes into account the cost of living for a various area as well as various things that are necessary to be able to work (eg child care, transportation, and medical coverage). It does not budget time or money for any entertainment or leisure time, or any long-term financial planning such as retirement or savings.

So in short it's a minimum wage, except a minimum wage that's actually based on the immediate day-to-day costs needed to keep you working at your job. In fact it's really less political than the minimum wage itself, since the minimum wage is just an arbitrary number someone chose - one that's usually low enough to require the government to subsidize businesses who employ minimum-wage workers, through various social programs. Why is the minimum wage currently $7.25 instead of the $15 equivalent it was in the 70s? We simply haven't legislated an increase.

Can you change what costs are considered essential to keeping you working? Sure, and those do change over time. 70 years ago you wouldn't have had to include child-care costs since you'd have a stay-at-home wife to care for them. And indeed such things should change when justified by conditions on the ground - we no longer live in an economy of 1-income households, and it's not just foolish to pretend we do - it's harmful.

I assure you that Americans demonstrate ample resistance to perceived increases in the living standards of the poor, it's unnecessary to preemptively rule out any changes down the road.

I agree with regard to inflation. That should be taken into consideration.

I don't see the contradiction. Today, if we move min wage to 20, undereducated people will get pushed out by people with two years of coll.

In the long term, if we increase min wage to make it a livable wage by which you can raise a family, what would motivate a 16 yo to further studies and become the two year comm cool grad? I grew up with disaffected youth. These are the guys and gals who thought, I dont need much, I'll get a job at Joe's dad's shop. College ain't for me.

The "living wage" is much lower for a single person than for someone supporting a family of four. Are employers supposed to pay workers based on family size?

This is one of the problems with defining a living wage. I also don't think at this day and age one can live on an entry level job --as might have been possible with some /many blue collar union jobs. People should look at entry level jobs as that. Entry level where the goal is to improve and go beyond entry level.

Some of those suggestion are counterproductive. For example unpaid overtime is great way to eliminate gender pay gap.

Completely agree. It's unfortunate how many Americans don't realize how poorly they're treated as employees. I don't think it even becomes obvious until you've traveled globally and had children.

But this is also why we have more billion-dollar startups than the EU. Isn't it?

Yep, that's how America works. The holy dollar over its citizens happiness and well-being.

I seriously looked into relocating to Germany as a mechanical engineer after salivating over their extended paid vacation time and ease of taking transit all over Europe. But if I were ever to start a company, fuck paying for that. I'd do it in the US where labor is cheap and business taxes are low.

You're right, but think about what the implication is. In exchange for a lower quality of life, we have more billion dollar startups. Not the only billion dollar startups-- just more relative to the more civilized countries. Most of these startups don't actually improve the public's daily life significantly, and offer incremental efficiency, convenience improvements, or services that people will be not using 99% of their waking time. Sure, on the long view software is "eating the world", but it's nibbling around the edges first, occupied with the condiments and garnishings rather than the meat.

Successful startups in exchange for shitty labor protections are a shitty trade for the vast, vast majority of people.

That's true of tech startups. But think of startups that aim bigger. The South African who founded SpaceX would have struggled to amass his army of engineers in Europe. In the long run, these moon-shot innovations that are only possible with huge amounts of cheap talent might save humanity. The low-hanging fruit (first airplane, first rocket motor, first PC) that could be started in a garage by a few folks working in their off time is gone.

I like that we have both types of labor climates in the first world. High-risk, no safety-net and unshackled by regulation like in the US, but also a more cushy albeit less dynamic one in Europe.

That's what we are told, I'm not sure it's true.

You realize that your proposal would kill startups. No small company can afford this list of benefits.

Am I the only one disgusted that women were only being given 10 weeks (Now reduced to 6, with 6 additional weeks for medical reasons) in the first place? This is one of the many workers rights areas that the US is far behind the rest of the modern world.

Clearly.

why does change always have to come with conflict on this side of the pond? It seems like the governments of EU members are more proactive then reactive when it comes to employee rights.

I think we read that line differently. My understanding was that biological mothers were given the standard 6 + an extra 6 + more if needed. They actually come out a bit ahead here, but it's still only 3 months.

   The company’s current policy — which went into effect this
   year — gives six weeks of paid caregiving leave to all new
   parents. Biological mothers receive another six weeks of
   leave, and more if they have additional medical needs.

Quoted so people know what we're referring to. The sentence on biological mothers describes two things. The extra six weeks for being the biological mother, and additional time as needed (with some limits, but probably covered under insurance at this point) for medical conditions.

For comparison, Norwegian employees have the right to take in total (both parents combined) 49 weeks paid parental leave at 100% of their salary, or 59 weeks at 80% of their salary. For heterosexual couples, the father is required to take 10 weeks leave and the mother is required to take 9 weeks leave.

Why the difference for what mothers are required to take? Is it assumed that they're already taking a week for the delivery and initial recovery that isn't counted against the total?

I don't know the reasoning behind the rules. I think it's safe to say that almost no couples distribute their parental leave so that the biological mother has less than 10 weeks leave, and few have significantly less leave for the mother than the father.

It's probably just an artifact of some sort; it has no practical significance. I'm pretty sure that the 49/59 weeks include delivery though.

What's more disgusting is the US has no law regarding paid parental leave[1]. Nearly every other country in the world does. If your company is giving you paid parental leave in the US, it's actually a nice benefit!

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave

> What's more disgusting is the US has no law regarding paid parental leave[1]. Nearly every other country in the world does. If your company is giving you paid parental leave in the US, it's actually a nice benefit!

This is somewhat true, and somewhat misleading: the US national government has a more limited role than many other national governments, with much that would be done by national governments in other nations being done by state governments in the US. Several US States -- perhaps most relevant to HN, given the tech industry focus, California is among them -- do have paid parental leave requirements (whether its directly employer paid or paid through disability insurance.)

Quebec has one of the best parental leave policies in North America, and it's all payed for by the government's unemployment payroll taxes, so there is little cost to companies (other than hiring a replacement). You basically get a full calendar year shared between the mother and the dad as you see fit at 70% of your salary.

It has made having a child a lot easier, especially for young professionals.

That sounds wonderful...but does that mean if you have three children in a row you get three years off work and get paid for it? If so, that seems like it could be difficult for companies to work around.

True, but this is an edge case that is unlikely given the toll that pregnancy takes on a woman's body and the challenges for the family. If you have kids, can you honestly say that you think this would be a good thing to try?

Another issue is where the parental-leave financial support comes from. Should it be the company's responsibility, or is this a government initiative to invest in the health of its citizens? Would you support the idea if the company had zero financial responsibility for the paid-leave (and only had to bring the parents back on once leave is over?)

Unemployment benefits (to which you contribute with your paycheck when you don't have kids, fwiw) pay, not the company. A company just needs to hire a temporary worker three years in a row to replace you, if needed.

I was not thinking so much in terms of financial difficulty, but in terms of changing company culture. A lot can change at a company in three years. You may have to completely reorient the employee. Or...maybe since the employee has been absent for so long, their position is no longer valued/needed. The company shifts in a different direction without the employee there to shift with it.

Can all jobs be easily replaced with a "temporary employee". If you have a lot of inside knowledge and training that allows you do perform well, it would take a lot of training to get a temp up to speed.

Also, three children may be an "edge case", but two definitely is not and it seems like the same problems would apply.

So it really is the France of North America.

Just what the economy needs: additional legal risk and associated expense for employing people.

Whether you like it or not, the US economy is going to get first-world worker protections, even if it needs to be dragged kicking and screaming (GDP be damned).

Kicking and screaming is the only way US business forfeits anything. We fought a civil war over slavery, for god's sake.

"Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing … after they have exhausted all other possibilities."

This is pretty optimistic. If I've learned anything over the past 10-15 years it's that there are a lot of stupid people voting against their interests in the US.

You can have mandatory paid leave without additional risks for the employers. In Germany for example the paid leave is partly paid for by the health insurance and partly by taxes.

All the employer has to deal with is not to see the employee for a few months, but good management should have plans for that case anyway (e.g. dealing with sickess/accidents).

The German attitude to work is entirely different (better), though.

I worked closely with a German boss for a few years, and the difference is ultra palpable. The entire way of working plans for sane hours (even when this is a struggle to make work), ample time to eat/rest while at work, plenty of vacation time (and no emails or bothering during that time or any time other than standard work hours where the employee is physically present at work), sick time, and time to get organized for projects. Meetings are viewed as last resorts because they're time/energy costly and typically low-productivity. Projects that don't fit that mold are put on hold until there's time for them.

The American style is closer to "fuck you for thinking about slacking".

Man, I gotta find me a German boss.

Just depends where you work. I work 2-3 days a week and get paid for 5. This is in America. Hacker news is such an echo chamber for American hate.

Conversely, there are plenty of people who work for 7 days and get paid for 5. Anecdotes don't change the fact that labor protections are nonexistent and desperately needed in the US.

Not arguing that but someone offer a German example so I'm offering an American one.

Obviously your situation is the exception, not the norm. I've worked a lot of jobs and met a lot of people, I can't name one person with such an arrangement. Even the self-employed folks that I know don't enjoy that amount of leisure time. You're very lucky. What line of work are you in?

Systems admin.

That might work for a large company for somebody in customer service since it is not that hard to get a replacement.

It is absolutely going to be a huge issue with the company if it is the programmer who built system X and she is going to leave for a year.

And that doesn't even touch the discrimination against those who don't want children in the first place.

Economy exists to serve the people, not the other way around. Making a "perfect" economy through the medium of miserable workers is failure.

They are not entities as such. If we granulated things such that everyone was self employed, some people would forgo self given benefits and some people would take all their self given benefits. Of course in this case people would be making that decision themselves, rather than a company.

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