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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

#401

Post by MattLaroche »

kooshball wrote: post #362
MattLaroche wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

What do you mean by "extra" on "extra CA PFL"?

Companies I am familiar with continue vesting through the full length of their paid parental leave.

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

#402

Post by MattLaroche »

paxys wrote: post #312
MattLaroche wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just switched jobs in San Francisco, and part of my search was parental leave. I did not see any companies in the 6-12 month paid parental leave range. 6-20 weeks is the range I saw. Twitter at 20, Square (and I think Facebook) at 16, Google at 12, and most at 6. I'm totally onboard with it being government funded instead of employer funded. I think tying it to salary (and what people pay in) makes sense, as many p…

Netflix gives 12 months for maternity/paternity.

Thanks! I didn't check them out because I wasn't interested in leaving the city (and only included FB because I'd heard theirs was good).

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

#403

Post by [deleted] »

colmvp wrote: post #395
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like I say in another comment, my partner works for a small startup of ~12 people, 7 of whom became pregnant and gave birth in the last five years or so, while working for the company. The company manages just fine. It's a small startup of a dozen people. Almost two thirds of their employees had babies and the company's productivity never suffered from it. Fact, one of the ladies had twins and came back after a month…

I know severely women in my family who had exceptional academic and early careers. Once they had their kids, their drive to work dropped dramatically. Even my female CEO has been a lot less consistent as a productive performer compared to what she used to be pre-kid. That's not to say that I think all mothers are like that or that it's a bad thing per se since I'm all about work-life balance, but I can see where comp…

[deleted]

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

#404

Post by chongli »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #372
to_bpr wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is incredibly dystopian and would be massive government and corporate overreach. I would hope a reasonable person would never advocate for such intrusion.

Most of these are already in place and they already have your information about your family. Insurance providers, the IRS, and so on. Women already have absolutely no choice in people knowing they are expecting a child. For health reasons - both theirs and the baby's - they already need to take time off. It isn't like women can claim a back injury when they are pregnant. A few bad employers already put their hands in…

Yeah, so what if the father is the sole income earner of his starting family and being forced to take leave (with its attendant pay cut) causes him to miss a rental payment and his family gets evicted?

This is a draconian idea. Besides, employers don't want it! If they didn't want you coming to work, they would lay you off. Otherwise they're going to look the other way. Families living on the edge will do anything to avoid this problem, including leaving the father's name off the birth certificate, if it comes to that.

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

#405

Post by smackfu »

lovich wrote: post #6
rednerrus wrote: post #2

One of the solutions to this is matching paternity leave. If I gave you the choice of two employees, one of whom would take 12 weeks of paid leave and one who would take 2 weeks of paid leave, which would you choose? If you offered both sexes 12 weeks of paid leave, you wouldn't have to make this decision.

You'd have to make it mandatory leave. The social pressure is still tilted towards women as care givers and men as providers so more men will end up not using the leave. If it becomes mandatory then it's just a baked in rising to every employee, _and_ will probably do better for society to have both parents get time with their children. I believe some European states solve this by having the state cover ~60% of your…

You give men twelve weeks of paid leave after their wife gives birth, most of them are going to take it.

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

#406

Post by throw2016 »

Decades of Neoliberal economics and systemic propaganda by self serving libertarians nostalgic for settler ideology and 'freedom' it seems has resulted in a corporate 'business only' society that is completely divorced from the practical realities of humanity.

Many of the commentators seem to be arguing against their own existence like they are robots who just turned up, no one had to give birth to them or bring them up. And its not just their parents, there is a whole infrastructure around you that took hundreds of years to build that we call civilization and culture that allowed them and you to get you to where you are.

I don't see how you can value or discuss culture or have any kind of shared existence and commonality with other human beings without acknowledging the entirety of the human condition.

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

#407

Post by vkbandi »

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…

Account deleted

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

#408

Post by kadenshep »

vkbandi wrote: post #407
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…

Account deleted

This sounds contrived, at the very least extremely anecdotal with a bit of hyperbole sprinkled on top.

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

#409

Post by scarface74 »

existencebox wrote: post #142
tptacek wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife interviewed at Google and was asked how she'd be able to meet the requirements of the job while taking care of young children; the discrimination persists even after pregnancy.

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…

I agree. You can't have it all - a man with one butt can't dance at two weddings. You have to make a choice between aggressively getting ahead in your career and family.

I think more couples should think about the effect that thier (not just her) career will have on thier family and choose to make the necessary lifestyle choices accordingly.

I married my wife in our mid thirties and she had two kids she was raising by herself - in a good neighborhood (meaning they weren't struggling). We've made plenty of career limiting choices to put our marriage and our family first. She took a pay cut to work a job with fewer hours and less pay and I gave up all of my side hustles and refuse to work a job that requires extended frequent travel, long hours, or a long commute.

I don't expect a business to accomadate my family choices or to reward me as highly as someone who is willing to put in 70 hours a week. On the other hand, a business shouldn't expect me to sacrifice more than 40-45 hours a week with my family for their benefit. I'd much rather lose my job than lose my wife.

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

#410

Post by eigenstuff »

xienze wrote: post #105
to_bpr wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As a society, we've decided that being able to continue the population is more important than the fortunes of any particular startup. Err no. It wasn't long ago that a family could survive well on a single income with the mother at home, cars paid, schooling sorted and food on the table. Not even remotely feasible on a single income now, unless you're talking executive pay. Society has by and large chosen to abandon…

Don’t forget feminism’s role in this as well. The traditional working father/stay at home mother arrangement has been deemed oppressive and degrading to women.

I'm pretty sure the role of feminism in all this is, "women can do whatever the hell they want, if they wanna be a SAHM, that's fine, and if they don't, that's fine, too."
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