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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: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday August 06 2015, @05:59PM
The big advantage post-women's lib is that no a woman without a man is truly like a fish without a bicycle. In 1950, it was basically impossible for a woman to support herself, but by 1990 it was quite possible for a woman to support herself and a child or two. That meant that, among other things, women were less likely to be trapped in relationships with abusive men because they could now afford to leave.
Also, women's lib was mostly between 1950 and 1975, whereas the complete stagnation of wages was mostly 1975-present, so the timeline doesn't really add up.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by scruffybeard on Thursday August 06 2015, @06:28PM
I am not sure you can say that the timeline does not add up. As more women entered the labor pool in the 70's, wages stagnated due to increased supply. Now that families had two incomes, the could afford to pay more for a home, so home prices started to jump. In the 90's the government gave out more loans so that more families could buy a home, thus putting more money into the system, increasing home prices.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @07:58PM
Yup, it looks a lot like cause an effect relationship. Those tend to take time.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday August 06 2015, @09:43PM
The timeline? The result of women's lib had to take effect, before the "benefits" of low wages could come into play.
BTW - the stagnation you mention didn't really start until about 1990. I made more and more money up until about '93 or so, and since then, I've made less and less money. It all depends on how you define the wage stagnation.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Friday August 07 2015, @01:24PM
I was defining the wage stagnation by this graph [wikimedia.org], which is wages versus productivity (there are lots of variations from a bunch of different sources, but they all show basically the same story). For the "women's lib caused it" hypothesis to be correct, we should have seen the split between wages and productivity begin to happen by the late 1960's when women's lib began to take hold and start having effects on the work environment.
Of course, you personally would likely have had a different career trajectory, particularly as you gained experience and bargaining power (I certainly did - I currently pull in about 4 times what I did starting out). But an apples-to-apples comparison would be your current earnings with somebody else with approximately the same level of experience in approximately the same location in the same field, adjusted for inflation. I'm lucky in that I can actually do that - my dad was also a software developer, so I can see that his salary 30 years ago was about the same as mine today (if it had kept up with productivity, mine would be about twice as much as his was).
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday August 07 2015, @06:22PM
Ahhh - I see . . . .
That graph is probably more accurate than my memory. Funny, how closely that graph matches the ever-increasing impotence of unions. I suppose that because the stagnation of wages didn't affect me personally, I just don't remember it happening in the '70's and '80's. Only when it began to affect me and people I know did I take real notice of it.
As for my step-dad - he loved the holidays, because he could go to work, take the next shift for the other turn foreman who called in, and SOMETIMES take the FOLLOWING shift for the remaining turn foreman. It was nothing for him to bring home $1000 for a day's work, or if he worked three shifts in a row, around $1400. (that's take home pay now, not gross) Me? The only time I have ever earned $1000 or more in a day, is when I signed a reenlistment contract. The few "bonuses" I've ever been given were only in the hundreds of dollars.