Maternity Leaving?
| By Emily - Jan 9th, 2007 at 12:54 pm EST |
| Also listed in: Campus Progress Blog |
The Family and Medical Leave act, signed into law by President Clinton in 1993, is the only law guaranteeing (some) Americans with job-protected leave for issues such as maternity leave and family illness. On December 1, 2006, the Department of Labor issued a formal request for public comments on the FMLA, including a detailed request for new and unpublished information related to the effects of FMLA regulations on business operations and outcomes. Supporters of the FMLA argue that this request for information was prompted by the business, anti-FMLA lobby - wanting to reducing the requirements for employers. Within the text of the request there is really no evidence of this - and any major changes would have to go through congress though, leaving little worry in my mind about significant losses in the law.
It appears the the DOL is not looking to change maternity leave policy: The Huffington Post reports that the Department of Labor said that it, "has not received complaints about the use of family leave -- i.e., leave for the birth or adoption of a child. Nor do employers for the most part report problems with the use of scheduled intermittent leave ...such as when an employee requests leave for medical appointments or medical treatments like chemotherapy. Rather, employers report job disruptions and adverse effects on the workplace when employees take frequent, unscheduled, intermittent leave from work with little or no advance notice to the employer."
What I would like to see (but strongly doubt) is additions the law. The FMLA provides only unpaid leave, up to 12 weeks, for workers at larger firms, to workers who have worked more than a year, and live within a certain distance of their workplace. This leaves a whole LOT of people out of the mix.
Moreover - in a Harvard study of 168 nations, 163 had some form of paid maternity leave; leaving the US in bed with countries such as Swaziland and Papa New Guinea.
I'm not saying we should start offering a year of paid maternity leave, but the current law provides little support for new parents, and there are serious issues that must be reconsidered.
It appears the the DOL is not looking to change maternity leave policy: The Huffington Post reports that the Department of Labor said that it, "has not received complaints about the use of family leave -- i.e., leave for the birth or adoption of a child. Nor do employers for the most part report problems with the use of scheduled intermittent leave ...such as when an employee requests leave for medical appointments or medical treatments like chemotherapy. Rather, employers report job disruptions and adverse effects on the workplace when employees take frequent, unscheduled, intermittent leave from work with little or no advance notice to the employer."
What I would like to see (but strongly doubt) is additions the law. The FMLA provides only unpaid leave, up to 12 weeks, for workers at larger firms, to workers who have worked more than a year, and live within a certain distance of their workplace. This leaves a whole LOT of people out of the mix.
Moreover - in a Harvard study of 168 nations, 163 had some form of paid maternity leave; leaving the US in bed with countries such as Swaziland and Papa New Guinea.
I'm not saying we should start offering a year of paid maternity leave, but the current law provides little support for new parents, and there are serious issues that must be reconsidered.
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This whole "look who the US is in the company of this week" business is a very sordid way of making an argument.
Fact of the matter is, the US is run, at a fundamental level, on principles that are rather different than nearly all other developed democracies in the world. We are also, I would argue, better off than nearly all other developed democracies in the world on the whole.
Better to argue for a policy's specific merits than pointing out who we're in the company of.
This same illogic is often trotted out in the debate over universal health care.
The vast majority of European nations don't have a guarantee of freedom of speech that's anywhere nearas strong as our First Amendment. Should be be giving it up, then?
As far as paid leave goes, this raises a wide variety of questions. What incentives does such a situation create, both for mothers and for employers? Who will pay for it?
Any talk of a new entitlement program that doesn't discuss the incentives it creates might as well be a dead letter.