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

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

#61

Post by gambiting » Thu, Oct 30, 2014, 4:12 PM UTC

darkstar999 wrote: post #53

jnsaff2 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Estonia has 78 weeks of paid Maternity OR Paternity leave, parents can choose which one stays home and gets to take care of the baby.

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 stop paying. The same rules apply to maternity/paternity leave.

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

#62

Post by jessaustin » Thu, Oct 30, 2014, 4:13 PM UTC

ForHackernews wrote: post #30

LanceH wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or bank any leave at all. My current employer wipes vacation days on Jan 1.

In some places, that policy is in place to encourage employees to actually take time off. If it wasn't use-it-or-lose-it, some people would never take leave.

We always hear this, but it doesn't really make sense. First, a firm that actually wanted employees to take vacation could just make a policy by which a certain percentage of banked time would be automatically scheduled by HR after so long a period of banking. Second, under the "lose-it" policy, many employees don't actually use all their allotted vacation. This can happen even to those who really try to schedule it. A cynical manager can always stymie the best-considered vacation plans. I consider that this common result is actually the intent of this anti-employee policy. (At many firms; of course any particular firm may be an exception.)

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

#63

Post by mcfunley » Thu, Oct 30, 2014, 4:14 PM UTC

It's really easy to get the wrong idea about post-childbirth from just watching your friends have kids on Facebook. I think it's commonplace to assume that the birth is the difficult part, because nobody posts about their trauma in the weeks that follow. Birthing a child ranks on the scale of sick-day-worthiness somewhere near a gunshot wound. This woman's treatment is deplorable. (And yes, the whole damn system is deplorable.)

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

#64

Post by darkstar999 » Thu, Oct 30, 2014, 4:14 PM UTC

_dark_matter_ wrote: post #49

supercanuck wrote: post #11

I wonder how being a woman at Netflix and other such companies with their unlimited vacation policy is like .

Not sure about Netflix, but I know that when I was at Twitter they offered 12 weeks of paid vacation leave (paternity and maternity). Some of this was mandated, and paid for, by the state.

Looks like Californians are lucky enough to get 16-18 weeks paid maternity leave.

http://siliconvalleymamas.com/2013/03/understanding-maternit...

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

#65

Post by supercanuck » Thu, Oct 30, 2014, 4:15 PM UTC

_dark_matter_ wrote: post #49

supercanuck wrote: post #11

I wonder how being a woman at Netflix and other such companies with their unlimited vacation policy is like .

Not sure about Netflix, but I know that when I was at Twitter they offered 12 weeks of paid vacation leave (paternity and maternity). Some of this was mandated, and paid for, by the state.

For PFL in California, the maximum is $1,000 something per week and you get the money on a Bank of America Debit Card.

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

#66

Post by Buttons840 » Thu, Oct 30, 2014, 4:16 PM UTC

tgb wrote: post #18

LanceH wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or bank any leave at all. My current employer wipes vacation days on Jan 1.

Aren't they generally required to pay you for accrued leave or is even that not required?

My employer will not pay us for accrued leave. I saw the end result recently when a co-worker took a week and a half off only to return with his resignation in hand. Guess he cashed out his vacation time anyway....

Now we all realize that if someone is going to resign, it's most likely going to happen after a long vacation. I don't know if HR realizes this yet.

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

#67

Post by rcavezza » Thu, Oct 30, 2014, 4:16 PM UTC

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

I believe it's mostly for accounting purposes. Most employers allow you to borrow from what hasn't accrued. It doesn't typically become an issue until you leave the company and have used more than has been accrued. At that time, they will probably not pay you for X days you are over your accrual.

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

#68

Post by asgard1024 » Thu, Oct 30, 2014, 4:17 PM UTC

minimax wrote: post #14

cafard wrote: post #7

There should a name and shame on this one. What is the university, and what does it think it is doing?

This is a systemic problem here in the US. It would be counterproductive to try and single out one actor when the issue needs to be address comprehensively.

Why not? Sometimes people desperately organize boycotts of institutions that they want to behave, but it never succeeds, because everyone needs at least one of the institutions (for example, everybody needs to be employed).

I think maybe there could be a lottery and people could collectively agree and randomly single out one actor and boycott it for some time. That would force at least that one actor to care and enforce competition. Who cares about fairness, if everybody is guilty?

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

#69

Post by tragomaskhalos » Thu, Oct 30, 2014, 4:17 PM UTC

michaelochurch wrote: post #25

The takeaway from all of this: employers in the U.S. do not care about mothers of young children at all, unless we’re consumers of their products. It might be more accurate to say that they view us as horrible useless burdens who need to be ushered back to full-time work as swiftly as possible. They will do anything in their power to keep employees from exercising their federally guaranteed rights to twelve weeks of…

Also true in the UK, but for a different reason. Here, a huge raft of citizens live above the level of the welfare system but below the level of financial comfort afforded to a relatively small professional elite. This group is financially squeezed in so many ways that it is unusual now to see parents in said group with more than 2 kids. This is an extraordinarily serious problem, as effectively the engine room of society is no longer numerically self-sustaining.

At present, the only de-facto solution appears to be immigration, which of course creates huge tensions and problems of its own. But it is an enormously difficult task to reform the welfare system to create the appropriate incentives (or, equally, disincentives) without also victimising the weakest members of society.

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

#70

Post by sologoub » Thu, Oct 30, 2014, 4:19 PM UTC

Osmium wrote: post #44

PeterisP wrote: post #8

Pretty much every country in the world, both 'first-world' and poor countries, has it better than USA in this regard. 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 - you have to ask for a significant premium in salary, since even in good companies (the OP lists multiple items where her job is considered 'above average') you're simpl…

> 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…

UK to US is not as straightforward as say Russia to US (my path). Yes, Russia offers a lot better protection on paper, but what most people don't think about is that in most of the world what is written is very often not what is in practice.

The US state of post-doc employment is well documented to be abysmal. I never had to go through it, but had the privilege to work with people that had and gave up, going tech route instead.

Because of taxation and general consumerism, you get great standard of living as long as nothing bad happens. On average luxury goods are cheaper in US. You even have the option of Oregon to avoid sales tax on big purchases all together (doesn't work on cars easily).

The weather/nature in Bay Area is amazing too. Los Angeles is a bit more desert-like, but still great.

Can't speak for east coast though.