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How My Employer Put the “FML” in FMLA

the-toast.net

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Re: How My Employer Put the “FML” in FMLA

#221
post #39

At this point, the male students would nod and go on about their days, and the female grad students would stick around in an increasingly panicked state to ask about that whole saving annual and sick leave thing, since their contracts don’t include leave. I was 100% like the male students until fairly recently when my girlfriend and I started having serious conversations about having children. The conversation was so…

I knew America has awful employment law, but wow.

Re: How My Employer Put the “FML” in FMLA

#222
I went through this last year with the birth of our second son. My wife was making sure that everything would be taking care for talking to HR multiple times and they all saying she would be fine. Come time for her to take time off we were presented with a whole other story. First she would't get all the weeks off because she went into labor a week early then expected and to top that she wouldn't be getting paid over the summer (She worked as a school RN at this time). So we were out 5 months of income. Luckily I gotten into a bad habit of placing all the money I will need for my taxes at years end into my account and just not touching it. Well that bad habit saved us for sure, but now the taxes are a pain in the ass. I guess that's life.

Re: How My Employer Put the “FML” in FMLA

#223

The problem has nothing to do with the country. The problem is that the HR clerk, like all HR clerks, is an idiot.

The (unstated) objection that can be inferred from the article is that because the US has no firm protections here, it pushes the burden and costs of these programs onto employers, who are incentivized to minimize spending on these programs (and thus the benefits).

Re: How My Employer Put the “FML” in FMLA

#224
I work for an employer with generous benefit policies and am male, but even still ran into enough HR nonsense that it felt as if I was the first human working for an organization with over 150k employees who had ever had a child.

In short, I was:

- Warned that I could potentially be charged with fraud for enrolling my wife in family health coverage before the baby's birth.

- Told that I would "void my FMLA rights" if I performed any work activity while off. (Although I had 10 weeks of paid accruals and supervisory approval to take off!) The overzealous HR person tried to have my accounts disabled as well. Stopping this required that I walk into the HR Director's office and complain -- not an option for people lower down in the hierarchy.

- Charged $750 because my son had the temerity to be born after the new year, and hospitalization pre-approvals expire with the calendar year.

My wife had a whole litany of wacky things happen. It is a nightmare.

Re: How My Employer Put the “FML” in FMLA

#225
Canada gets this so right with {p|m}aternity leave for either parent, which levels the playing field for both sexes.

Disclaimer: I am an American who is a product of the military health care system, and thinks it is a real solution for civilian healthcare. Also, I intend to move to Canada in the next <10y. There is no free health care, but I'm happy to pay the tax that supports it if it means I won't lose everything due to catastrophic illness.

Re: How My Employer Put the “FML” in FMLA

#226
post #211

I find the whole notion of "sick days" and accruing them bizarre. What happens if you're sick but don't have enough sick days saved? Are you fired? Stop getting payed? For comparison, this is how sick leave works in the uk: https://www.gov.uk/taking-sick-leave And I don't want to even get in to how fucked up it is to have to save up years of vacation days to take some time off when you have a baby

At my startup I've decided to have a "take what you want when you want it" vacation and sick day policy. I care about results against goals, not how many hours you work or when they are. Abusing the policy in a way that affects morale (e.g., deciding only to never show up in the office and spend a year working from your batcave) would be grounds for a warning/replacement. So far it has worked well, but with only a ha…

Do you have a written policy? Care to share it?

What happens if an employee falls on stairs and spends the next two months in hospital and then another one in bed, at home? (happened to a colleague of mine)

Re: How My Employer Put the “FML” in FMLA

#227

"You will be shocked to hear that the updated policy was developed in part by a man who does not have children." You will be shocked to hear that even men without children can recognize the need to retain employees that they value, because you can be sure that your competitors in the employment market will offer less misogynistic polices. Sadly, I had to argue this very point years ago with my Microsoft coworkers. "W…

It sounds like OP works in academia. Unless you have tenure, the job market works in reverse in academa: you need them more than they need you. So they are free to fuck you over because there's always someone else ready and willing to take your place.

Re: How My Employer Put the “FML” in FMLA

#228
post #39

At this point, the male students would nod and go on about their days, and the female grad students would stick around in an increasingly panicked state to ask about that whole saving annual and sick leave thing, since their contracts don’t include leave. I was 100% like the male students until fairly recently when my girlfriend and I started having serious conversations about having children. The conversation was so…

Why? It was your choice to have a child why should your employer pay for it, and why should all your fellow employees that did not have children have to work harder to cover for you while you are on paid leave?

I think it is selfish for new parents to demand all this time off, you were hired to do a job, do it, if you can not or unwilling to because you have made a choice to make a major change in your life then i am sure someone else will be happy to get paid do to your job.

Re: How My Employer Put the “FML” in FMLA

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the US the only legal guarantee you get is that you can leave for 12 weeks unpaid and you'll probably still have a job when you get back. (1) Most companies provide better benefits than what is legally required (2) The US has a robust and very expensive welfare system (3) Unlike something like cancer pregnancy is not an accident. If you can't afford to pay for children, don't have them. FWIW most tech companies…

> Most companies provide better benefits than what is legally required Cool, let's just bank on the generosity of companies. > Unlike something like cancer pregnancy is not an accident. If you can't afford to pay for children, don't have them. Did you even read the article? These people can obviously afford to have children. They can't afford to become unemployed because they had children. Short of being independentl…

> Cool, let's just bank on the generosity of companies.

Or, how about you think about this when finding a job, and weigh the pros and cons of various employers' benefits and policies. We don't always need top-down guidance from bureaucrats in D.C. to solve societal problems.

Re: How My Employer Put the “FML” in FMLA

#230
post #39

At this point, the male students would nod and go on about their days, and the female grad students would stick around in an increasingly panicked state to ask about that whole saving annual and sick leave thing, since their contracts don’t include leave. I was 100% like the male students until fairly recently when my girlfriend and I started having serious conversations about having children. The conversation was so…

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