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Comment by phpisthebest | Hacker News Reader

You know companies have budgets right? you can not just "hire more people" and remain profitable, no profit no company.

Companies are not charities created to employ people.

So sure if only 1 person is off on leave most likely another person could be hired

But 5 years of protected leave..... What percentage of the work force is going to be out on that? Also since it is very hard to terminate someone in the EU, what happens to the employees that are "filling" the positions of those people out on 5 years of leave? can they be terminate or do you have to keep them employed even after the original employee returns?

If you can be terminated would you take a job knowing the second the parent returns you will be terminated

Parental leave should be measured in weeks, not years. If you want to be a stay at home parent for years, leave the work force and then return...,.

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You are misunderstanding what the 5 years is: it’s a protection against being fired. You know as retaliation against actually having priorities that trump your employers emergency-through-incompetence-while-planning.

The actual leave time is typically around a year. Which is roughly where you can give children over without them crying. But yeah the workload of that parent will have to be picked up by additional staff

For one thing, most companies have hard time keeping employees working for them so this 'we have hired too many good workers and now we have to get rid of them' does not happen nearly as often. As others have pointed out, it's not a 5 year leave. Assuming it one to two years and assuming you simply cannot afford to have more people on payroll it's completely OK to hire somebody specifically for a year or two. Not all work contracts are indefinite.

I have no kids, don't plan on having any but it's kind of crazy how 'hail corporate' some cultures are. We're humans after all. Let people spend some time with their newborns instead of forcing them to make more money for somebody 3 weeks after giving birth.

Not five years of leave. Five years of protection that one wont be fired due to having taken leave is the way I read it.

Also in the system I work under, all employees pay a government tax that is used to pay for the parental leave. That is, the money isn't coming out of the companies pocket, but coming out of a national bucket designated for the purpose. The company pays nothing when the employee is taking this time.

Well, not "nothing", just not money directly. They still have to pay the loss in productivity during ramp up times. It's less of a big deal, but it's not nothing.

What you suggest is not a good government policy in my opinion. A government wants educated people to not be scared to have kids. Leaving a job to be at home a few months and look a for a new job after is extremely stressful and risky, and it can destroy a career.

And long parental leaves are just normal and common in some countries. A medium to large company has no issues dealing with them. It’s part of the management work to deal with that.

Moreover it’s better for a company that their employees don’t leave.

> Companies are not charities created to employ people.

And employees are not charities for their employers! If you can't afford the staff needed for a given task, perhaps you should pivot to something else.

Right you are paid X currency for X labor.

How is paying employees to sit at home not working anything other than charity/

It’s because when you hire employees they come with the aspect of being “people”. People work to live, they don’t live to work.

This has the very very close connotation to "from each according to ability to each according to need"

I live a very frugle life, my expenses are low, I have no kids, I dont take expensive vacations, drive a fancy car, etc...

So should that mean I do not get time off, or high raises, etc simply because my "needs" are not the same as a co-worker?

Why should a co-workers personal life choices (i.e the choice to have 1 or more children) be a factor in the terms of their employment?

I think employment policies should be agnostic to the personal life choices and situations of employee's infact the employer should not even know if you have kids or not, let alone provide you with "extra" because you do

Sounds like you would support a policy of income based on your personal expenses. Should the programmer with 5 kids make more than the programmer with no kids simply because the programmer with kids has more expenses?

Maybe you should talk to your boss and ask for more, instead complaining about others.

I am in the US and I do pick my employers based on these kinds of policies because their is no government mandate.

Considering having children is beneficial to society and the economy (e.g. it's advantageous for employers since they still want to be able to hire people in n years and surely they'd like there to still be customers) one could argue that the programmer with five kids should get some "compensation" for this service, and as we know some countries do either directly or via employers.

> Should the programmer with 5 kids make more than the programmer with no kids simply because the programmer with kids has more expenses?

The programmer with 5 kids does make more than the one with no kids because he pays fewer income taxes. So the answer to your question is yes: it's how it already works.

No my question was should they. I also disagree with the Child tax credit.

> Sounds like you would support a policy of income based on your personal expenses. Should the programmer with 5 kids make more than the programmer with no kids simply because the programmer with kids has more expenses?

First time in Europe? That's pretty much a given here, more kids = bigger tax break = more netto pay.

> How is paying employees to sit at home not working anything other than charity

They are not sitting at home doing nothing, they are raising children. Helping them to do that is companies' share of investment into the workforce of tomorrow. Your utilitarian "fair" worldview doesn't account for the fact that having kids is insanely profitable to the economy. In modern economies, every kid is worth at least a million bucks over lifetime.

If you choose not to have kids and not contribute in this way, then who's going to foot the $1M or $2M bill for you?

Where do new employees came from? Do they materialize adult and fully educated out of thin air? Society-wise new workers are born and raised from preexisting workers. If corporations don't bear some of this burden in minting new employees, they are free-riding.

Those are operational costs. They are part of the costs the company has to support in order to have access to that country's labour market. If the company is unable to compete in that market they are, of course, most welcome to leave this market and go operate in some other lawless country.

Well you're actually paid a fraction of every X dollars of value you produce

if the companies are unhappy with those terms then they're free to go elsewhere. under those terms companies hire people, so your assessment that such terms must break companies is clearly wrong.

>Companies are not charities created to employ people.

And employees aren't charities required to do things unpaid because there isn't the budget.

It works both ways

> What percentage of the work force is going to be out on that?

Its the workforce who votes for those laws. The workforce in Europe are not propagandized fools to the extent that they vote against their interests.

> Parental leave should be measured in weeks, not years. If you want to be a stay at home parent for years, leave the work force and then return...,.

And is for things like this that libertarians shouldn't make laws

> Parental leave should be measured in weeks, not years.

slavery ended thousands years ago

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