SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
On Tuesday, August 4th, Neflix announced on their blog that they would begin offering new parents a progressive parental leave policy:
...Today we're introducing an unlimited leave policy for new moms and dads that allows them to take off as much time as they want during the first year after a child's birth or adoption.
The Boston Globe picked up the story earlier today and compared Netflix's new policy to Google's, which offers 18 weeks of paid maternity leave and 12 weeks of "baby bonding" time. The Boston Globe also notes:
The US and Papua New Guinea are the only countries among 185 nations and territories that hadn't imposed government-mandated laws requiring employers to pay mothers while on leave with their babies, according to a study released last year by the United Nations' International Labor Organization.
This new policy "covers all of the roughly 2,000 people working at [Netflix's] Internet video and DVD-by-mail services, according to the Los Gatos, California, company."
However, not all media voices are pleased with this change. Suzanne Venker, author of the recent book The Two-Income Trap: Why Parents Are Choosing To Stay Home, writes for Time :
Offering new parents full pay for up to one year is akin to putting a band-aid on a gaping wound. The needs of children are huge, and they do not end at one year. On the contrary, they just begin. Taking a year off of work to meet those needs merely scratches the surface.
What does Soylent think? Should companies offer new parents lengthy paid leave after they bring a new bundle of joy into the world, or do generous policies do more harm than good?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bradley13 on Thursday August 06 2015, @05:28PM
What exactly does Ms. Venker want, then - 18 years of parental leave?
The thing is: you choose to have children. Your company may value you as an employee and offer to let you take time off, and that's great. However, like so many things, mandating this is counterproductive. It means that companies will be more reluctant to hire women in their prime childbearing years, because they are expensive: it's not even just the salary, it's hiring a temp while keeping the job position open, knowing that there is an excellent chance that the woman won't come back for long, or at all. Add in the gender-equality laws in many countries (which make no sense in this case, since it's never the man who's pregnant), and you have a right mess.
If you want to help the companies afford this, you can go the way of Germany. Which is a nice country to live in (I spent 5 years there). But you take home less than half of your pay, and what's left gets nailed with 19% VAT. That's the price of generous social services. I wonder: wouldn't Germans really rather have twice the money, and then privately decide if they want to take unpaid leave / pay for child care / whatever? Certainly I was very glad to move to Switzerland, where taxes are less than half as high, even though we had two small children at the time.
Personally, I would rather see paid and unpaid leave policies decoupled from any particular reason, and left for the individual company to decide. From the company's perspective, it doesn't matter why you will be absent: whether your are enlarging your family, trekking in the himalayas or just taking some time to recharge. I also object to government subsidies, because it isn't free. You pay for it one way or the other, and paying through the government is probably more expensive, because of all the bureaucrats between you and the final service.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Francis on Thursday August 06 2015, @06:00PM
The solution to that is to eliminate maternity leave completely and replace it with a similar leave that applies to all new parents. It appears that Netflix went that route, the leave applies to everybody, so anybody of the age where they're likely to have children will be treated the same way in this regard.
As far as the Germans go, the actual difference is probably less than you'd think. A lot of the things we have to pay for here are paid for by the government or the company. Focusing on take home pay ignores that a lot of that take home pay that we have has to be spent on things that the German government takes care of. Then you have things like mandatory vacation, everybody gets at least some vacation, so you actually have some time to enjoy what you've worked for. In the US, many people get no vacation at all, and they might not even get holidays off, so they get weekends and not really any other time.
It's really about time that workers start to demand to be treated better as profits are way up and a part of that is that workers are being shorted.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Thursday August 06 2015, @07:16PM
Yes, I thought I said that. The high taxes in Germany come back to you in the form of excellent social services. The question in my mind is: is this efficient? By the time the government has paid a child care worker, they have also paid half-a-dozen bureaucrats to approve the paperwork. I expect it would be a lot less expensive to let people keep their money and purchase child care directly. The unspoken benefit is egalitarianism: everyone gets the same quality of social services, regardless of their income level. That is an important benefit for German society, but is has quite a price tag attached to it.
The same for vacation: there is really no reason why someone in the US can't negotiate with their employer for more vacation, in return for a lower salary. The problem seems to be that decent vacation in the US is unknown, so no one does this. That's actually weird, because government workers do get a lot of vacation [federaljobs.net] (after three years, you get 10 paid holidays plus 4 weeks of vacation every year). I think most people in private industry have no idea that this is true, or they would ask for the same from their employers?
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Thursday August 06 2015, @08:35PM
A big problem in the U.S., when considering social benefits or re-distributive policies, is that there are so so many people that want a cut. Not just bureaucrats, although that's a big problem (no federal government programs ever actually get cut. When they say they are cutting, what they mean is they are cutting back on the planned increases), but it's also all the cronyism. Food stamps are not coupons mailed by a government agency - they are "EBT" cards managed by large banks (that get a cut). Welfare is handled the same way, and most unemployment benefits. Medicare and medicaid are full of for-profit corporations (insurances and health providers) that are all getting more payment than they would if people were paying out of pocket (and the fraud and abuse is rampant).
And trying to cut down on the fraud and abuse is typically just another layer of bureaucracy with its own attendant bloated administration and political wrangling, all costly. I would say that AFDC and EITC are better, but the IRS is now very corrupt, and refund fraud is now costing about $20 billion a year.
A lot of this is enabled by the incredibly complex tax code. The tax code is now over 75,000 PAGES! Full of crony perks and loopholes for all the buddies of everyone that has had a modicum of influence on Capital Hill for 15 minutes during the last 30 years. Money flows to the wealthy and well-connected, some crumbs of it is passed out to the poor to try to get support from constituents, and the middle class are squeezed all the time. About 1% of the politicians that get sent to Washington are actually interested in doing anything about it, and if they start to get anywhere they can look forward to a visit from the NSA about all the dirt they have collected...
I am a crackpot
(Score: 2) by nukkel on Thursday August 06 2015, @09:26PM
The answer is Basic Income: everyone gets the purchasing power to obtain these services directly, and the entire bureaucracy can be eliminated wholesale (except for a small contingent whose job it is to disburse the basic income).
(Score: 2) by nukkel on Thursday August 06 2015, @09:23PM
The solution to that is to eliminate maternity leave completely
While at it, might as well eliminate pensions, unemployment handouts, disability handouts, etc. and replace everything with a Basic Income.
Greatest way to cut out the huge bureaucratic overhead.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2015, @02:25AM
A basic income would eliminate the need for unemployment insurance and food stamp programs, and paired with single-payer healthcare it would significantly improve everyones' lives and the consumer economy (buying products) and worker economy (buying labor), however pensions are something you earn through work, so there's no legitimate reason to scrap them. Disability pay probably couldn't be eliminated entirely because even with a basic income, people will want to work for extra money, however certain disabilities render people completely unemployable so there should still be some kind of way for them to earn extra compensation (in addition to already covering the biggest cost in their lives - medical costs). It could be argued that people unable to work due to mental disabilities could be said to not have the mental capacity to need additional funds, however if physical disabilities are the reason, there should definitely be a way to earn extra money.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @06:07PM
I wonder: wouldn't Germans really rather have twice the money, and then privately decide if they want to take unpaid leave / pay for child care / whatever?
The answer is no. They're aware that the option exists and have chosen a different way to organize their society. They have political parties that are against the welfare state, and they consistently lose elections.
(Score: 1) by jdavidb on Thursday August 06 2015, @06:12PM
you choose to have children
Exactly! I have chosen to have eight, and I can't imagine expecting other people to bear the burden of that.
Your company may value you as an employee and offer to let you take time off, and that's great. However, like so many things, mandating this is counterproductive.
It's amazing how people make the leap from "this is good" to "mandate it." They have a club in their hand and will gladly swing it to make people do what they think is right. We need to put down the club.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 1) by Francis on Thursday August 06 2015, @06:55PM
It's not amazing. Most publicly owned corporations routinely act against their own best interests in order to get marginally better results for the current quarter. And it's hardly unheard of for companies like Kodak and GM to just about run themselves out of business doing it.
Things like healthcare have been going away for ages now because the cost of employees being sick doesn't have a line item on the budget. Same goes for sick days, employees that don't have sick days have to choose between coming into work and losing the pay. So, they'll generally come into work, do a shit job and make other people sick who themselves come back to work and do a shit job.
In an ideal world, companies would do things that were in their best interest, but they don't. The frequently screw over the employees for a short term boost in share price even when it means they have problems with efficiency and productivity later.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Friday August 07 2015, @12:20AM
Things like healthcare have been going away for ages now because the cost of employees being sick doesn't have a line item on the budget.
I feel that it's more complicated than that.
In an ideal world, companies would do things that were in their best interest, but they don't. The frequently screw over the employees
I believe the greatest cause of deviation from the ideal is the wielding of the club. Just putting the club down would make the world much closer to ideal.
I say this as someone who has personal been screwed over a few times and has had a lot of friends and coworkers screwed over as well.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2015, @02:31AM
Sorry, but no. The club has been picked up because its necessary due to far too many actors actively fucking people over. Putting it down, as has been happening over the past few decades through massive deregulation of everything, has done nothing but destroy the economy and make everything worse for everyone, except for a tiny number of people who benefit greatly by fucking over everyone else.