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Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies

nytimes.com

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Re: Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies

#361

Post by coldtea »

narag wrote: post #42
coldtea wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One of the solutions to this is matching paternity leave. One of the solutions to this is litigation, like in other countries, and burying any company that does it to the ground (including with consumer backslash and media shaming). "Matching paternity leave" doesn't solve the problem for single mothers -- and it just provides a broader target to discriminate against.

Old curse: I wish you sue and win.

That might be true for personal affairs (e.g. suing an ex etc) and the mess than entails, but no for suing some business entity that screwed you over.

Re: Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies

#362

Post by kooshball »

MattLaroche wrote: post #212
tinbad wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wouldn't be much of a problem if there are better government organized programs in place. In fact, California's paid parental leave is funded by employees and is a relatively small tax of 0.9% (over the first $110k of wages only)[1] that includes other disability pay. [1] http://www.edd.ca.gov/Payroll_Taxes/Rates_-_Historical.htm

I'm glad CA's PFL program exists, and by American standards, it's very good. But it only pays 60% of income, for 6 weeks, and up to a level under the salary of most in product-engineering-design in tech. Most tech companies true up salary above the PFL levels for those 6 weeks (and potentially pay 100% for more weeks), and in SF, truing up to 100% for those 6 weeks is required for companies above a certain size.

How does vesting usually work if you take the extra CA PFL?

Re: Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies

#363

Post by kelnos »

rayiner wrote: post #158
existencebox wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's something that has always nagged at me in these discussions, and I've always been somewhat afraid to bring it up lest I misconstrue, but I want to try and figure this out. What's a state of affairs we can reach such that people don't become preemptively discriminatory for lack of being able to examine factors that would impact workplace performance? We agree, societally, that we shouldn't discriminate against…

> However, we don't live in a world where a business is spared the cost incurred by that. We also live in a world where the stock market ceases to exist if there isn’t a new generation of consumers and workers. (Facebook’s stock price is predicated on the idea that 1 years from now there will still be young people to advertise to.) Children create internalized costs (to parents, to businesses that hire parents), but…

> We address that situation by categorically prohibiting discrimintion.

I think a part of existencebox's point is that this prohibition doesn't entirely work, because companies discriminate anyway, and craft the playing field so that they either don't get caught, or that the cost or repercussions of fighting back end up being too high for an individual to bear.

Perhaps if we were more willing to look at the actual negative effects (on job performance) caused by pregnancy, childbirth, and child-rearing, we could actually create incentives to "pay for" those negative effects and stamp out discrimination.

But no, instead we just "prohibit discrimination", without trying to find remedies for the reasons why companies want to discriminate in the first place. It helps, sure. But it falls far short of actually fixing the problem.

Re: Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies

#364

Post by threatofrain »

simonh wrote: post #347
threatofrain wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also agree that larger businesses should shoulder higher burden than smaller ones, but if we make any business pay in a headcount sensitive way, then we are creating disincentives which may be explored in opaque ways. I also think that some industries, such as education, have substantially more women than men and thus will shoulder disproportionate burden. I also think that richer areas will shoulder the burden mor…

I suspect that well meaning attempts to rig the system that way would just backfire. Big companies have the resources, lawyers and incentives to manipulate and exploit regulations like that to their advantage. I think the simplest approach, which is just regulating against discrimination, may not be perfect but trying to come up with a perfect system will just impose so much regulation and costs and exploitable looph…

I think we agree that companies shouldn't be allowed to discriminate on the basis of sex, reproductive status, or family plans. However, I would contend that a simple blanket rule doesn't address the incentives to discriminate.

I would also argue that burden to compensate companies for employees taking time off for personal or family matters (regardless of sex, reproductive plan or status) should be shouldered at the state or national level, and not at local level where there may be higher disparity in both burden and capacity. If both men and women are allotted mandated time to attend to family, and both men and women warrant access to funding for their employers, then companies would lose incentives to discriminate because presumably everyone would want their time off.

If the federal government compensated businesses, then startups and small businesses wouldn't be exempt from protection, nor unequally stressed relative to bigger businesses. As another commentator pointed out, the UK has a similar model.

Re: Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies

#365

Post by pimmen »

mayniac wrote: post #317
solatic wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is that always reasonable? This is why remote-only work culture is so important for social justice in tech. Flexible working hours from home gives women the freedom to work from their recovery beds, walk away from the computer to feed their newborns, be there to give their kids a snack and ask them how was school when they get home. One of the best hiring strategies is to focus on workers whom the market is underva…

>This is why remote-only work culture is so important for social justice in tech. Flexible working hours from home gives women the freedom to work from their recovery beds, walk away from the computer to feed their newborns, be there to give their kids a snack and ask them how was school when they get home. Although I agree in principle, I can think of few things as horrifying as new mothers working from a hospital b…

She doesn't have to work from the hospital bed if she has paid maternal leave. Even better if the father has paid paternal leave and can help when she's recovering.

Being a Swede, it's just so unreal when I hear about how it is in the US.

Re: Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies

#366

Post by pimmen »

ISL wrote: post #72
hectormalot wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thought experiment: would it still be a (meaningful) difference if the father would get the same leave as the mother?

It would hinder the employment for anyone, regardless of gender, who expects to have children.

I don't think so, in Scandinavia we have a very low unemployment rate and Stockholm is one of the most vibrant tech hubs of Europe. We offer every employee some of the most generous paternal and maternal leaves in the world. You can take time off for your children even when they're 11 years old if you save up some days (you get months off that you can take whenever you like).

We also have some of the most generous laws for taking care of your sick child. If you fire an employee because they're taking care of a sick child all the time, boy is your business in for a world of hurt.

The unemployment rate is lowest for people in their 30s, which is the time in life when it's likely people will either be getting a child or they already have a child at home that needs to be looked after. It might have something to do with our government subsidised daycare though.

Re: Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies

#367

Post by doktrin »

jobigoud wrote: post #359
Spooky23 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The abuse is the compulsory, unpaid pager, and the expectation that you’re working 7a-9p. “Joe” with the young kids pushes back because he has to. You’re the sucker saying yes. The fix for this is easy. You pay for on-call, and have a understood system for assigning it. My brother in law is a fireman... he misses many holidays, but can plan around it because there is such a system.

> “Joe” with the young kids pushes back because he has to. Having children is just a choice of a hobby that takes a lot of time, but in our current culture it's reprehensible for me to say I can't fill in his hours because I have my own hobbies that I want to do instead.

Children are sort of a social necessity, hence carrying more gravitas than conventional hobbies. Obviously "I can't work because I'm cartooning" is gonna be met with more skepticism than "I'm taking care of a sick kid"

Re: Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies

#368

Post by doktrin »

tinbad wrote: post #14

Personally experienced it. Wife worked at Google, had always positive performance reviews. Come pregnancy time she informed her manager, 3 days later they put her on a performance improvement plan. It didn't take long for them to realize they were making a big mistake, risking an expensive lawsuit so they let it go and let her have her paid 12 month leave. After returning she got the choice to do the PIP or take seve…

Interesting. I'm genuinely surprised that a company like Google with both massive financial resources and who actively court a progressive public image would be so shortsighted as to start systematically discriminating against pregnant women.

Re: Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies

#369

Post by posterboy »

bobcostas55 wrote: post #192
tptacek wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am very much the wrong person for you to recruit in an attempt to apply the axiomatic method to discrimination laws. Discriminating against pregnant women is wrong because it's wrong, full stop.

Murder is wrong yet we don't spend infinity $ on trying to prevent it. There's a point where we go "we could spend more to prevent more murders but it's not worth it". Everything is ultimately subject to the constraints imposed by reality and therefore the economic costs and benefits related to certain behaviors. Therefore, designing policy based on willfully blind moralism is a terrible approach. If you're not even…

> we could spend more to prevent more murders but it's not worth it

that's a contradiction in terms. What's "it"? What could you spend and why is it worth less than it's supposed to? I'd argue that it fails because most direct attempts to stop murder involve more murder. Which is to say, no, we could not, or we would've done it, but of course the reasons are very difficult. An easy solution is to restrict the definitions, which is necessary, because death is awfully complicated for the mind to process, but therefore also subject to abuse.

And, individually we have less interest in our neighbor procreating. But in a benevolent reading, tptacek's quoted question could be reduced to "how will you be able to care of young children, given that we require a high degree of commitment to the company?"

Re: Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies

#370

Post by fabatka »

eps wrote: post #338
dilyevsky wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My manager at said company once said to me that my planned paternity leave "is untimely" with a straight face.

What's wrong with them saying that?

Because the timeliness of paternity/maternity leave is determined by the childbirth's date, not by anything else.
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