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Microsoft Will Require Business Partners To Offer Paid Parental Leave (washingtonpost.com)
Microsoft has unveiled a new paid parental leave policy on Thursday that will affect the more than 1,000 firms it does business with across the U.S. An anonymous reader shares the report from the Washington Post: Technology giants in the United States offer some of the country's most generous employee benefits, but the workers who mow the lawns or serve lunch in the company cafeteria -- jobs that are often staffed by outside firms -- tend to get far smaller packages. Microsoft announced a new policy Thursday that it hopes will shrink that gap, pledging it will ink contracts only with service providers who give their employees 12 weeks of paid family leave. Per the requirement, mothers and fathers who perform work for Microsoft -- biological and adoptive -- must receive 12 weeks of leave at two-thirds of their wages or up to $1,000 weekly. The announcement comes as Washington state, where the company is based, prepares to introduce paid family leave for workers, the fifth state to do so. Microsoft currently offers its direct employees 12 weeks of paid family leave at full pay, and birth mothers receive an additional eight paid weeks for physical recovery.
Seriously, paid parental leave should be obvious to society. Countless studies have shown benefits across the whole family when BOTH parents get time off to raise the child at birth. If this is the case, one can only assume that the price of these contracts will go up, which means that MS is willing to accept an additional cost in order to do the right thing. Good on them.
Amazing that it takes a private company to start going where every other Western country has been at for some time.
They employ a lot. Last I checked all US tech support is still done out of India (might be the Philippians now, India was getting a little pricey...).
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I skipped over this article and only later found it on Twitter. Yes, it's good that MS is making a stand to demand reasonable parental leave of its partners, using it substantial economic power to help this happen ... but it's quite significant that they're demanding twelve weeks of paid parental leave for all partners, even landscapers, janitors, and cafeteria workers.
I think it's called Windows, Maternity Edition.
And could you imagine hiring the Duggars? 3 lost months from each person every year.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
It's standard here to have up to 17 weeks pregnancy leave and up to 63 weeks of parental leave (by either parent). It's all unpaid with employment insurance covering 52 weeks of it.
This is paid leave, though. Why should you get paid for not working, ever?
The answer of course is that the US native reproductive rate has fallen below sustaining. If we want to survive as a society, we need to be encouraging each woman to have slightly more than 2 kids. Not to mention that both parents are generally pretty damn useless until the kid starts sleeping through the night, so you might as well deal with that reality.
We sure need to do something to keep professional parents from waiting until nearly 40 before having kids - that's almost certainly the reason for the spike in autism. Personally, I'd like to see a cultural shift in the US to "bust your ass in your 20s, work part time for the rest of your career". I doubt it will happen. but IMO is the correct way to address work-life balance, strategically.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I would like the time for my fur babies
Twelve weeks is a good amount of time to properly train a puppy. I'll happily take it.
Man, this "fur parents" stuff needs to be killed with fire. Right up there with actual furries, if you ask me!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
> it's good that MS is making a stand to demand reasonable parental leave of its partners,
No it isn't. They using their market position to act as a bully.
They are trying to act as a de facto government entity. They are pretty blatantly trying to be Robber Barons.
This is the worst kind of corporate fascism possible.
Yet you gits eat it up because today's abuse of power suits you. You give no thought to the bigger picture or possible future implications.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
GDP Per Capita (USD):
Canada - 51,315.89
US - 53,128.54
We're gettin'er done and enjoying the benefits along the way.
I'm curious about the eight additional weeks for physical recovery. I can certainly picture it taking eight weeks to recover physically, at least in some cases with more complicated births, but that's not what we're talking about here. Maybe the first twelve weeks weren't set aside for physical recovery, but that's what happens anyway during that period. So now we're up to twenty weeks, and that's a long time.
And don't forget that next on the docket is paid Menstrual leave. https://www.self.com/story/pai... .
I'm not against time off for mothers. It's nice to have some time at home with the baby, and in some cases after a C-Section it really make sense.
But for the fathers? That's 3 months for exactly what? Moral support?
So here we have a person getting 3 months off of every year that she decides to have a child, and then an extra 12 days of leave every year that she doesn't.
Folks, we really need to look at the reality of the situation. This sort of thing tends to be well meaning, but eventually backfires. So you have a young woman of childbearing age and a young man interviewing for the same job. They are both similarly qualified. By law, you cannot ask her many questions. I had a big list of verboten questions, and often had to ride herd over a co-worker who tried to sneak them in.
Who are you going to hire?
It is actually an important question, especially for demanding positions that require a lot of training. If, as one of the women where I worked had several children over a short period of time, her replacements were putting in more time than she was for several years. Side note - every time she came back to work at her guaranteed job, another woman - the replacement - lost her job.
I wonder though if Microsoft's demand includes paid maternity leave for the replacement workers filling in while the first worker is out on maternity leave.
But back to that question of how much time off is to be expected, it will come into question, because there will be a tendency to hire the person who is going to cost your company less. Single men will have a big advantage.
another note: several women candidate interviewees would quickly blurt out their marital status, and that they didn't intend to have children or already did, so that they could sidestep the issue of our not being allowed to ask anything of the sort. Interestingly enough, they tended to be more qualified and worked out well when hired. Seems like the understood that workplace omertà wasn't working in their favor. third note. I always tried to keep the office at 50:50 regarding gender.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I always tried to keep the office at 50:50 regarding gender.
Differently Justin Trudeau has a Slashdot account. Sexist twat bending over backwards to try and not look sexist.
Nope. The field most of the office worked in had a lot of women candidates. So there were going to be qualified women. My experience was that if there was few women compared to men, they would tend to feel overwhelmed, and oppressed. If there were a large majority of women, there was a remarkable amount of infighting with each other. This was over some 30 years, and no doubt serviscope_minor and Animojo will chime in to call me a sexist male along with you calling me Justin Trudeau.
Slashdot is funny that way.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
But he's absolutely correct. The vast majority of Americans are very well off. It's only the rich that are struggling.
Paternity leave applies to a father, whether or not he is married. Just as maternity leave applies to a mother, whether or not she is married. So while a single person might be less likely to have children, the premise is still the same that neither gender would have an advantage.
Now... I guess you're pointing out here that a single father is likely likely to be involved with his children's upbringing than a single mother, and so would be less likely to take the leave. That's probably true. But that's another thing which should probably change, and giving him the opportunity to be involved in that upbringing is one part of that.
Personally, I don't think that encouraging good parenting should be up to the employer. I doubt that the leave is forced, but that's kind of an interesting idea. I can see some benefits and drawbacks to doing it that way.
The "and I'm probably better off in the end" is the mass lie that Americans tell themselves. No, you are not. Source: Math.
Agreed. Though it seems many fools seem to think the answer is to import people from different countries.
This isn't rocket appliances, provide inscentives for couples to stay together and have children. Stress on the 'stay together' part of that.
Norway: 70,812.48
Canada - 51,315.89
US - 53,128.54
Of course we only have 59 weeks or parental leave (at 80% salary or 49 weeks at 100%) following the 12 week maternity leave. Oh and it has none of these silly $1000 a week caps. So, if you're a CEO and you have $500,000 a year salary, you'll receive that the whole time you're out.
Though I'll admit, the job offers I get in D.C. (typically about $300K+) or in S.V. ($250K+) or in NYC ($200K+) are considerably more than the $128K base salary I make now. Though I do get overtime and I have side work for an extra $50K. I do pay A LOT more taxes here than I would there. But the standard of living is substantially higher here than over there. I didn't have to spend month interviewing day care nannies to ensure they won't diddle or beat my children. I didn't have to spend months applying to private schools to keep my kids away from the school shootings. I didn't have to put a penny in the bank for my kids college educations. I didn't pay for the lenses in my childrens glasses. I've never paid for a doctor or dentist appointment for my kids. Honestly, I take home a lot more in the end than my American counter parts.
My daughter dreams of going to MIT one day... I'll have to pay something for cost of living, but I won't spend a dime on the school itself. And she's well on track to get there too. If I lived in the U.S., I'd have to plan taking a second mortgage to cover her education even on those high salaries.
Holy sheep balls Batman.
1) The company doesn't pay the 17+63 weeks. They generally pay about 2 weeks. The government pays the rest.
2) It's amazing how societies that have this kind of empathy at a government level don't have the mass shootings problems. The government sets an example that you mean something to the country and the world from the moment you are born.
3) Packing formula or breast milk like a bagged lunch and coming home exhausted after working a full day to a baby who has a lot of needs is the way you breed serial killers. You are being paid by the government to establish a strong relationship and bond with your child. This makes it so that children aren't passed like a joint to an underpaid worker after 2 weeks.
4) We're all paying for this. When we were born, someone paid our mothers to raise us for two weeks, our tax money is used to pay it forward. This is no different than social security in America. You spend your life paying for old people to live through their retirements when they are no longer the optimal components of the work force. When you get old and retire, the next generations will do it for you knowing they will receive those benefits later. Now we could just pay the babies for a year to take care of themselves... but in all honesty, it's more constructive to pay the mothers and fathers to do it. You should try living in a 1st world country for some time and try to keep an open mind about it. I grew up in second world America and watched my parents lose most of their retirement savings when I was sick as a child and their savings were used to buy one insurance policy after the next. I would watch from a hospital window as the Ronald McDonald house had a daily stream of broken parents coming and going while they watched their babies die.. probably many of them because they could afford the good doctors.
I'm out of that now world now... if a parents here wants to have 40 children and they are willing to spend their lives raising them and caring for them, I am more than happy to help out. Of course, that isn't because I agree with them have 40 kids. It's because I would much rather make sure those kids have at least one parent to care for them than to think of the kids raising each other. I also want to make sure those kids have food on their tables as they shouldn't be punished for their parents crimes.
Norway has had a steadily decreasing population because of these social programs. This is because of many reasons. Among them
- People are raised right from birth by parents who are more focused on their physical and mental health since they don't worry about stupid things like how they'll afford to feed them.
- We don't just invest in the initial birth. We invest all through their lives. My son who just started high school received a loan of $600 from the government. The terms of the loan are "Each year of school attended pays off X% of the loan" or "Payment in full is expected on termination of school". Which means that if you drop out, you have to pay back the portion you haven't earned. $600 isn't much, but he plays American football and he'll be able to buy a $450 set of pads an a few jerseys with that. We invest all through a child's life in their mental health, the physical health and their education and upbringing. We do this as a nation. This makes healthier people... who go to work and love what they do.
- Religion. Religion is typically reserved for people who need hope. Hope is for people who are discontent with the current state of their lives and the world as a whole. Hope is for people who feel they lack the power to control their lives or improve the world around them. What would be the attraction of heaven or fear of hell if what came next didn't really matter since it's more important to live for the planet you're on. If you're a good person and you are surrounded by good people, and you work together as good people do to make sure that everyone in general are pretty good people... well you end up with a societ
My daughter dreams of going to MIT one day... I'll have to pay something for cost of living, but I won't spend a dime on the school itself. And she's well on track to get there too. If I lived in the U.S., I'd have to plan taking a second mortgage to cover her education even on those high salaries.
Why wouldn't you have to spend a time on the school itself? Are you assuming she'll have a full scholarship, or does Norway pay for its citizens to attend universities in other countries?
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