How My Employer Put the “FML” in FMLA • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by acketon » Thu, Oct 30, 2014, 6:01 PM UTC

chrisBob wrote: post #114

I am a graduate student, my wife is a post-doc, and we are expecting our first child in the next few weeks. I actually just found out that my school recently (this summer) made a policy allowing graduate students to take up to 60 days of paid leave, so I am fortunate here at BU. I didn't realize how bad the US policies are until we started talking with our (mostly foreign) coworkers who were all surprised that my wif…

I am also at BU (staff) and my wife and I had our first child this past spring. Our benefits are good compared to my past employers, and I took a few weeks of paid vacation time so I could stay home with my wife and help after her c-section. I'm glad to hear that there is leave available for graduate students as well. Are the 60 days of paid leave for sick time or paternity leave? I had not heard that anything changed recently with the rules around time off.

Best of luck to you and your wife!

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

#172

Post by hderms » Thu, Oct 30, 2014, 6:02 PM UTC

jahnu wrote: post #21

rdtsc wrote: post #3

Aside from police brutality, all the spying and erosion of privacy, corruption at high level (like regulatory capture), the medical and insurance situation points more to the fact that this country -- US, is not a civilized country. It is a country with a high GDP, strong military, good natural resources, strong manufacturing. All those nice things. But it is still not a civilized country.

A thought from Jimmy Carter comes to mind. He said countries are not really 'democracies' or 'not democracies' but rather that democracy is either strong or weak. Similarly, one shouldn't say the USA is uncivilised but that some of it's civic institutions are weak in some ways. Additionally they do not uniformly share the same strengths and weaknesses across the entire country.

I think that's an enlightening way of looking at things, but doesn't quite bring the same shame as referring to ourselves as an uncivilized country.

Perhaps if the national debate was about being a civilized country instead of framing it as 'socialism' we'd eventually be able to move into the modern era in the context of social policy.

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

#173

Post by humanrebar » Thu, Oct 30, 2014, 6:05 PM UTC

eli wrote: post #146

jacalata wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lack of paternity leave ties directly into social assumptions that the mother is the carer, the "mommy track" at work, and through to the assumption of custody for the mother. I don't understand why it isn't a bigger issue. You should even be able to get feminists and MRA guys to work together on this one!

Myself and all the feminists I know are definitely in favor of paternity leave. I'm having a hard time imagining an argument against it.

I'm for it, but it's harder to legislate.

What if the father and the spouse are different people? What if someone meets and moves in with an already pregnant woman? What there isn't a spouse/SO but a live-in grandmother would want time off to perform similar functions?

It will be a challenge to both accommodate diverse family situations and make sure all newborns and mothers are properly cared for.

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

#174

Post by eksith » Thu, Oct 30, 2014, 6:05 PM UTC

eli wrote: post #152

eksith wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author info at the end says "Karen W. is a Duke City denizen..." I'm not sure if that's misdirection, but "Duke City" is another name for Albuquerque, NM. Edit: This is interesting. Not saying it's University of New Mexico, but it is in Albuquerque and this includes a reference to her exact phrase "pregnancy or prenatal care" : http://policy.unm.edu/university-policies/3000/3440.html And, on their FAQ under #21: http…

Please don't do that. Posting personal information about people who did not wish to have it public is super uncool. I'm sure if she wanted to name the university she would have.

There's no personal information here. Everything you see was what she had posted at the very end of the article, her signature, and common knowledge "Duke City" is Albuquerque. What remains were DDG searches for the specific phrases she put into her article in quotes.

I understand "outing" is a legitimate concern, but these are bits of information that she herself has revealed. The rest is conjecture, as I'm sure she would have expected of her audience as an educated and reasonably intelligent person.

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

#175

Post by seestheday » Thu, Oct 30, 2014, 6:08 PM UTC

kefka wrote: post #126

Pxtl wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Important to note that these are government leave programs. A big problem in the USA is that it is expected that your employer handle this stuff. Here in Canada, the employment insurance system - a payroll-tax-funded program that handles short-term unemployment benefits - also handles parental leave. They offer 4 months for birth mothers and a an additional 8 months for any parent. The money is tiny - something like…

I would correct what you said. That policy punishes the company of hiring any fertile woman. My dad used to hire for a large engineering department. One of the things he had to keep in mind is that if a woman is hired, they can leave pretty much at any time due to FMLA, and hiring someone else is not feasible (due to law). The simple result is if he were given a choice between a man and woman of equal capacity, he wo…

In Canada those rights are extended to the man. It's called paternity leave. The parent even mentions that he split the leave with his partner.

There are still cultural barriers resulting in many men not taking the leave, but at least it's an option.

I should note that I think tying the unemployment insurance to maternity/paternity leave is genius.

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

#176

Post by yardie » Thu, Oct 30, 2014, 6:11 PM UTC

sosborn wrote: post #127

Osmium wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let this serve as a warning for young (age-with-a-potential-to-have-a-family) people who might be tempted to relocate to California It's interesting. This is a difficult conversation to have. I have good personal reasons for wanting to relocate to California (I'm British/not American so this is difficult), though logistically it doesn't seem like that will/can happen. What I don't understand though is why so many p…

>it seems like it's fairly low down in terms of standard of living/worker's rights/healthcare/etc. While this is certainly true when you discuss the bare minimum legal requirements, many employers here go above and beyond the requirements and offer benefits that are equal to what you find in other countries.

The problem is those problem employers are in the majority. The many employers you're thinking of are typically in the STEM fields or highly unionized gov't, manufacturing, transportation industries.

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

#177

Post by Pxtl » Thu, Oct 30, 2014, 6:15 PM UTC

kefka wrote: post #126

Pxtl wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Important to note that these are government leave programs. A big problem in the USA is that it is expected that your employer handle this stuff. Here in Canada, the employment insurance system - a payroll-tax-funded program that handles short-term unemployment benefits - also handles parental leave. They offer 4 months for birth mothers and a an additional 8 months for any parent. The money is tiny - something like…

I would correct what you said. That policy punishes the company of hiring any fertile woman. My dad used to hire for a large engineering department. One of the things he had to keep in mind is that if a woman is hired, they can leave pretty much at any time due to FMLA, and hiring someone else is not feasible (due to law). The simple result is if he were given a choice between a man and woman of equal capacity, he wo…

Even when you extend the rights to the man, there's still the traditional cultural expectations will end up with the leave on the mother. I mean, I'm a liberal stereotype and we didn't split the parental leave until our third kid - we went the traditional way for the first 2. So even in the optimal "extend rights to both" we still have the problem that the female employee took leave and the male one didn't.

We can remove the financial burden from the company by shifting it to the Employee Insurance system, but I don't know how to remove the HR problem of "you have an employee who has gone for a year of unpaid leave and you must give them back their job when they finish their leave". There's no easy answer for that one.

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

#178

Post by mnw21cam » Thu, Oct 30, 2014, 6:17 PM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #61

darkstar999 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? That's ridiculous. Does the employer pay or is it government assistance?

In the entire EU you can take unlimited sick leave(which does not take away anything from your mandatory 25 days of paid holidays), and the employer has to pay only for the first 30 days - after that, the government continues paying your salary(it might be 75% of the full salary in some countries). If you are sick for long periods of time(>2-3 months) they might require you visit an approved doctor, otherwise they st…

Quite a few years ago, I had six months off work sick, followed by a gradual build-up to full-time work again over another six months. I got full pay throughout and a wonderful occupational health department complete with doctors looking after me. That's what you get with a good employer in the UK.

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

#179

Post by eksith » Thu, Oct 30, 2014, 6:19 PM UTC

laichzeit0 wrote: post #91

My boss once told me "90% of the ridiculous policies are in place to prevent the 10% that abuse it". It's a sad shame, but there are people that really abuse sick leave and the rest of us have to pay for it. In South Africa all employees are entitled to AT LEAST 4 consecutive months of maternity leave, up to 1 month prior to giving birth, or earlier if a doctor says so. You're also required by law not to return to wo…

But even the U.S. justice system is (ostensibly) geared toward "it's better to let 100 guilty men go free than convict 1 innocent man" with the presumption of innocence and all. While the justice system is hardly the paragon of impartiality, it's at least on paper just. I'm just astounded so many places aren't so.

Preemptive denial of privileges in anticipation of abuse is very wrong and I'm not entirely convinced these policies were enacted post abuse in many workplaces.

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

#180

Post by davidgay » Thu, Oct 30, 2014, 6:26 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #168

shawabawa3 wrote: post #24

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

As you probably have read, the historical reason for a limit on 'sick days' was abuse by people who were unhappy with their employer for one reason or another, that resulted in some employers simply firing people who go sick, and that lead to labor organizing itself in the form of unions and well you got sick leave as a thing [1]. I think it is generally a crutch used instead of good management (like mass surveillanc…

The usual solution to abuse of sick pay, mentioned in the UK link above, is to require a doctor's certification for any leave > X days (7 in the UK according to the link, I know it's 3 in Switzerland).