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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.