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Facebook Expands Parental Leave Policy For All Employees Globally (mashable.com)
Reuters reports that Mark Zuckerberg's not the only Facebook employee who will enjoy a nice chunk of time off to spend with a new baby; the company is expanding its parental leave policy (and posting on Facebook about it). The benefit includes up to four months of paid leave, to all full-time employees, including those outside the U.S., regardless of sex, within a new child's first year. That means that new parents of either sex will be allowed to take a longer absence; previously, non-U.S. employees who were not primary caregivers were granted four weeks of leave. From the Reuters story: [Facebook HR head Lori Matloff] Goler said the new policy will primarily help new fathers and employees in same-sex relationships outside the United States, noting that it will not change maternity leave already available to employees worldwide. ... Technology companies in Silicon Valley have been rushing to extend parental leave allowances and other benefits to help recruit and retain employees. Many high-tech workers, however, do not take advantage of such benefits for fear of falling behind at work or missing out on promotions.
The summary reads like there would be great parental leave benefits already in the USA, and now this benevolent company is taking this message abroad.
Am I just a victim of propaganda - I thought there are no parental leave in the USA?
Enlighten me, please.
Sounds like Zuck made a mistake talking about his own leave, and caused some complaints in the company.
Why would non-Facebook employees be interested in this at all?
This is less than the legal minimum in some countries. So some foreign Facebook employers already get more.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
This is all fine and good, but anyone who has zero interest in having children will not want to work there. Let's say one of the people on my 4 person team goes on child leave for 4 months. The rest of us will have to pick up the slack. Will we get paid any more for the increased workload? Doubtful. Will we see promotions because we worked diligently through those 4 months? Of course not, because that would be discriminatory against the team member who took time off. More likely, we'll be shamed into working extra hours to keep deadlines and any complaints will be spun into criticism of our company's "family friendly" policy.
No, if I found out tomorrow that someone on my team was leaving for 4 months, I'd start looking for a new job that very day. And I don't think I'm the only one.
it sucks to be forced to work even more to make-up for these people that don't want to work.
Allowing employees to take a big block off to get started on what may be the biggest achievement of their life is great, but what about for people whose aspiration is something other than being a parent? Even a guaranteed job after an unpaid sabbatical is a rare benefit. A generic "life goal" leave is, I would think, even cheaper to offer since the leave can be planned in advance to avoid crunch times (not that parents can't plan, but it's a rare one that seems to).
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
Can i get a 1 or 2 bouts of 4 months paid leave for choosing not to help overpopulate the planet? nope because i have to pick up the slack for those that mysteriously disappear for months on end yet still have a job to come back to at the end of it.
Reminds me of my time in the military. I'd been in 5 years and my housing was a barracks ( dormitory ) with shared bathroom. Someone just coming in with a spouse, kids or not, got a 2 or 3 bedroom house. My meals allowance was the ability to eat in a dining hall. Not on the base at mealtime? Sucks to be you, buy your own meal. Those with families got cash instead to eat what they wanted , when they wanted.
Like family leave with no comparable benefit for those who don't produce children, it's being compensated based on what you "need" vs what you "earn". Maybe I'm biased not having kids, but I'd prefer it was based on what you earn. If it's going to be need-based, then at least broaden the acceptable needs. Sabbaticals, or an equivalent time off in smaller increments for volunteer work or other personal enrichment would seem a reasonable need.
hardly BS.
Presumably, you're not expected to be at your desk 24/7, so there's some factor of "we need X number of people to do Y amount of work in Z calendar time". Software developers are not totally fungible (as some MBA types would like to think), but almost any manager has some sort of way of accounting for this. And, like vacation, this kind of leave isn't a surprise, you've got weeks to plan your project schedule around it.
Of course, it's possible you work for a company that is so ill-run that each and every snowflake employee is the sole possessor of critical knowledge to move the process forward. In which case the company deserves what it gets, as inevitably, someone gets sick, quits, or decides to hold the company for ransom.
It's the "my lead developer was riding their mountain bike on Sunday afternoon, hit a rut, flipped over and now is in the hospital for 3 weeks" that is the real challenge to a manager.
mmmmm inhale that funky Zuckersnatch
Welcome to the 21st-fucking-century.
UK Statutory Maternity / Paternity Pay:
https://www.gov.uk/paternity-p...
Gives up to 52 weeks paid leave for one/either/both parents (shared among them), including in case of stillborn, including for adoption, legally allowing you to build up holiday, get rises and return to work while it goes on.
Sure, it won't necessarily be at full-pay-rates but this is the fucking bare, legal, statutory MINIMUM that you're required to give by even being an employer in the UK
So let's not shout about how great Facebook are for letting you spend more than a fucking month with your newborn child.
The US really need to get out more and look at what other countries consider normal and/or moral.
Back in those evil bad old days that were filled with misogyny and racism (according to all right thinking lefties) we had something called family values. In this antiquated system a parental unit archaically called a 'man' took care of the finances, while the 'women' was forced to take care of the children and keep the home. In this evil system women were not allowed to assert their equality by working low wage jobs at convenience stores while their kids were in the back because they were not being paid enough to afford a baby sitter. This was before we had the all empowering social net of welfare. The poor business owners were forced to pay their male workers a living wage so they could support their wife and kids at home. Now thanks to democrats and womens liberation we have a system whereby corporations are able to employ twice the number of people (man and women) and have the expenses of raising kids fostered on those stupid upper middle class folks who want to help family's who are not paid a living wage.
I'm all for womens rights, and if I had a wife working for facey book, I would be more than happy to stay home and take care of the kids. But I think something has gone wrong with the current trend of 100% employment. The story of some girl working at 7-11 while her kid was in the back is 100% real. I witnessed it. Yet these women's right liberals somehow think that by 'allowing a women' to compete in a man's world and work a low wage demeaning job just to pay the bills is somehow liberating makes me sick.
If you have half the work force competing for jobs, employers will be forced to raise wages. The free market solution to low wages is to not work for low wages. The free market solution to not ending up as an unwed mother working a low wage job while on welfare is to not have sex with some smooth talking gangstar who will abandon you as soon as you get pregnant. The free market solution to not having a welfare society is to stop giving people welfare.
In the end every hand out liberals will give the so called disenfranchised will in the long run make rich white liberals (e.g. Hillary) even richer, and make the poor more of a slave to the state. Which is the intention of all right thinking liberal policies.
which causes those insurances to go up in cost for everyone, even those not having kids.
In some countries - like Switzerland - the same social insurance is paying other reasons to leave work:
- military duty (it's one of the last country to have compulsory military service - young men are forced by law to leave work ~1 month each year during ~10 years. insurance covers the salary during this time)
- alternatives to military duty
- some other public service (e.g.: some trainings from the national sport organisation)
In that perspective, raising kids is seen by the current law as one of the different form of duties that a citizen can accomplish for the greater good of the nation and which deserves that the salary lost during that time gets partially re-imbursed.
PS:
Things to keep in mind:
- Switzerland, like most developed countries and specially like most European countries, has a fertility rate lower than the critical 2.1 (currently it's around 1.5 child per couple). It currently manage not to have its population collapse thanks to immigration. So helping parent raise children is actually *VERY MUCH NEEDED* in order to encourage the fertility rate and avoid the population drop. That's why nearly all of European countries (like my Swiss example, but also lots of other, e.g.: Germany) have paid parental leave.
- Switzerland is a direct democracy. Law get voted by the general population (and not by some lobby in some "pseudo-representative" congregation like the US). Thus the fact that this law was voted in means that *the greatest part of the population actually thinks it's a good idea*. When other posters say "there is consensus in most of the societies that kids are a good thing", in the particular case of Switzerland this consensus among the population has been clearly demonstrated during voting.
Your idea that it's a bad thing that social insurance help pay for kids IS NOT shared among the biggest part of a whole country which effectively voted democratically such law into power.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Many high-tech workers, however, do not take advantage of such benefits for fear of falling behind at work or missing out on promotions.
The final item in the summary and from TFA caught my attention. Reuters was absent of details on a study proving this statement. The best thing I could find was a a Harvard Business Review article here:
https://hbr.org/2015/11/3-ways-tech-companies-are-offering-parental-leave
Linking to a study here:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...
With highly questionable methods - age, gender, socio-economic background, etc. etc. bias anybody?
Volunteers (N = 371, 131 men) participated in exchange for partial fulfillment of their Introductory Psychology research requirement. Of these, 50% were White, 30% were Asian, 4% were Black, 6% were Hispanic, and 10% reported another ethnic identity. The design of the experiment was a 2 (target race: Black, White) × 4 (family leave condition: childcare, parental care, two controls) × 2 (participant gender) between-participants factorial. We used two control targets; one who asked a HR officer for more hours (rather than time off), and one who merely inquired about his employee benefits. We included the latter control condition because it was possible that asking for more hours would be viewed as particularly masculine (e.g., ambitious). However, preliminary analyses showed no significant differences between the two control groups; they were therefore collapsed.
If anybody can find other research surrounding this topic - I'd love to see it. The "best" article I could find was one from Wired:
http://www.wired.com/2015/08/t...
Effectively commenting its about the culture surrounding parental leave at a company - not the actual company policy itself. Netflix policy - unlimited vacation - but highly frowned upon if you take it. Where I'm at - if you have a child - we COVER YOU and there is NO penalty to your career for taking leave. The only email you send out better have pictures of your newborn - that's it. Anything else we'll frown at you for trying to work while you are on parental leave. Same goes for vacation.
Disclaimer: I work in a Tech Hub outside Silicon Valley. If this truly is representative of the culture of Silicon Valley, I really feel sorry for the folks working out there.
Your company probably does already offer sick leave and even short-term disability benefits, right?
Sure. Like Lucy 'offers' to hold the football for Charlie Brown to kick. But woe unto those to act on a belief that those are genuine offers.
In Germany parents have to take 14 months in the first three years, and one parents can take 12 months maximum, so both have to stay home for at least two months: payed by the state, of course.
Mind you, lets see the employer of a thousand people in a production line or warehouse do the work of those thousand people. Oh, look, they don't. So why do they get paid?
She went on about how many hours she worked.
"I manage to get my work done during normal work hours" I replied.
Never heard the boast after that. And, thankfully, she and her husband started being in the home together more.
Most businesses, if they want to keep people or motivate their staff,will pay six months at half pay or full pay (frequently full pay for the six months, and half pay for the remaining six).
The money is enough to not have to work unless you have such a well paying job you are overspending and heavily in debt because you bought an expensive house and an expensive car plus spare. But if you live at average means of the blue collar worker, your statutory minimum will cover your expenses and mean you are not worse off.
If you're so much better paid that this payment is pitiful, then you are either overpaid or your services are worth paying for by the company to make sure you come back and keep working for them when it's over. And if they don't they don't deserve you (or you really WERE overpaid, but they couldn't fire you).