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Comment by skrebbel | Hacker News Reader

But.. You're pregnant! You're entitled to maturity leave right? Isn't that normal? Why do you need "leverage"?

I'm not kidding, so I'll ask again, even clearer. Does America not have the concept of maturity leave by law? Is it like considered a perk or something?

I'm so confused because, well, where I live when you're pregnant, tell the boss is exactly what you'd do! And then you get maturity leave. And the GGP says that that's somehow totally laughably ridiculous, so laughably ridiculous that it warrants sharing imgur gifs, and I really don't get it and I also still don't get how America can function at all when something as basic as this isn't, well, basic.

ps. also you're not being very helpful with "No, that's not what he's saying" without telling me what he is saying.

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> ps. also you're not being very helpful with "No, that's not what he's saying" without telling me what he is saying.

> If anyone believes individual cashiers asking for maternity leave is a good way to get it, I've got a bridge you might also be interested in buying.

Sequoia is referring implicitly to the significant difference in power and efficacy of individual vs collective bargaining in the United States. Collective bargaining (e.g. unionization -> union negotiations) has long been a way for workers to effect more change in workplace conditions and compensation than they would otherwise be able to, alone.

Paid maternity leave is a luxury in the United States.

The bridge comment implies gullibility.

There's apparently a federally mandated minimum of 12 weeks unpaid leave, with a number of exceptions. From what I can tell, Whole Foods does what it must, and not a lick more.

https://www.everydayhealth.com/pregnancy/101/tip/fmla.aspx

> ps. also you're not being very helpful with "No, that's not what he's saying" without telling me what he is saying.

It's a metaphor.

The implication is that in the absence of a bargaining organization and a written agreement, employees will go to their manager with a situation, and the manager will have to invent an individual policy on the spot, which will be more trouble for all, and probably worse for the employee. Certainly less fair, since not everybody has the same manager, or the same relationship with them.

Pregnancy is the vehicle of this metaphor. Nobody would claim that pregnant women would be better off without a written policy for maternity leave. All other situations are the tenor. There's no reason to believe that individual-serving-sized policies for other situations would work any better than for maternity leave.

sequoia isn't saying anything about maternity leave. They're using maternity leave as an example, to say something about the need for collective bargaining.

Where are you based? Are you sure unions aren't the reason you have these benefits?

I bet they are (Netherlands). I seriously don't get how anyone can interpret my comments on this thread as sceptical about unionization.

How are you inferring that from GPs comments? He just couldn't believe that the US doesn't have mandated parental leave - you know, like the rest of the world.

He could live almost anywhere in the world:

"The United States, Suriname, Papua New Guinea, and several island countries in the Pacific Ocean are the only countries that do not require employers to provide paid time off for new parents."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave

Glad to know that North Korea, Guatemala, Sudan, and South Sudan are considerate enough to provide paid maternity leave.

> North Korea

That's not terribly surprising, fascist ideologies are typically very family-centric, to the point of actual Darwinism/eugenics.

It's one more reason why I don't think the rising, bipartisan, hyper-capitalist, reactionary tide in the US can be accurately called fascism. It's a different creature in a lot of ways.

Whilst it's likely that from a historical perspective unions (or other collective action) fought for rights for workers, in many (most?) modern societies there is now legal basis for them.

I have found myself in the same position as the parent as a non-US resident who ended up in discussions where the assumptions made by those from the US and those not from the US about the rights of workers are so wildly different it stalls the conversation.

Likely EU or UK, if I had to guess. Maybe CA.

The UK is in the EU

Not for long.

it is considered a perk. good tech jobs, for instance, often have paid maternity leave, while cleaning and food contractors at these companies might not get this.

since up to 12 unpaid weeks is mandatory, people find a way to make it work, by saving money and going back to work very soon.

it is a common rhetorical trick in discussions of labor politics in the US to pretend that employers treat everyone the way they treat upper-middle-class salaried professionals (“i’m sure the boss would be reasonable if they just went and asked!”). So people may have assumed you were doing this rather than genuinely thinking things worked differently.

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