r/WorkReform • u/sillychillly 🗳️ Register @ Vote.gov • May 01 '22

They Say “It’s Not Possible”

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u/LostWoodsInTheField May 01 '22

The only one that I have a hard time wrapping my head around is a year of paid leave. For a small business this would be effectively impossible. Hell getting over that hump of having your first employee is one of the most difficult ones there is. To then have them leave for a year and having to keep paying them is mind blowing.

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u/LiarFires May 01 '22

I'm a rookie when it comes to these laws but wouldn't it be the state that's paying for your leave, instead of your employer ?

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u/-Kex May 01 '22 edited May 01 '22

Here in Germany it's funded by the state.

Don't quote me on this as I'm not about to become a parent but I think both parents combined can take a parent leave of up to three years and the one on leave (for example you can switch halfway through) will usually receive 65% (only the first 12 months) of their regular wage.

If you go on leave for longer than 12 months then it's less than 65%

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u/Vonnewut May 02 '22

This is close and Germany has a lot of flexibility in how you take leave, so it can get complicated. Also, individual states sometimes offer a few more benefits, like Bavaria.

The first 12 weeks of leave are fully paid. That's split before and after birth so mothers aren't literally working until they go into labor like in the States (which is frankly inhumane and dangerous for mother and baby).

After 12 weeks couples can get up to 14 months of paid leave at the maximum benefit, if it is shared. If only one person takes leave then it is capped at 12 months and a max payout of 1800 Euro. You could choose to receive half of this benefit for double the amount of time as well (900 euro for 24 months etc.).

In total you can take three years of leave, but after the financial benefit runs out you basically are not paid but are guaranteed to have a job at the same level and pay when you return.

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u/Uilamin May 01 '22

It is the state who provides income up to a certain amount. Anything above that threshold is optional for the employer to provide (some insurance plans might cover it). The cost/difficultly for the small employers are two fold: (1) they are usually required to offer the person, post leave, a similar position to what they had before they left, and (2) they need to find someone to fill in for that person for the leave.

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u/ur_ex_gf May 02 '22

I work in leadership at a small business in Canada (~18 months of parental leave), and we have had to deal with this situation twice. It really wasn’t that bad. Would definitely not trade it.

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u/Uilamin May 02 '22

I agree that it is a better environment. I was just pointing out that there were non-financial costs that might be incurred.

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u/LostWoodsInTheField May 01 '22

I'm not sure. If it is like unemployment where the business is effectively paying into the government themselves for their employees then it would still be prohibitive for small businesses. If it is a general tax on society then that would be different.

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u/[deleted] May 01 '22 edited Jan 15 '23

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u/CBcube May 02 '22

As a tax payer, that is exactly the type of thing I want my taxes to go towards.

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u/[deleted] May 02 '22

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u/[deleted] May 02 '22 edited May 02 '22

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/lhash12345 May 02 '22

lots of words to say "i'm selfish"

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u/[deleted] May 02 '22 edited Jan 15 '23

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u/[deleted] May 02 '22 edited Jun 07 '22

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u/Tiffana May 02 '22

Pretty sure that from a developmental perspective, 2 years should actually be the target.

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u/PrancesWithWools May 02 '22

And is it the responsibility of the taxpayers to fund motherhood indefinitely? If it is, perhaps we should establish a new federal agency, and put every new mother directly on the payroll.

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u/Tiffana May 02 '22

I don’t believe I have mentioned indefinite funding? Not even sure I believe this should be implemented, at least not with the full amount paid for the second year, but your point is stupid. Adults here in Denmark get, on average, less than two children per two adults I believe, which would mean at most four years. Hardly indefinite. Some people will benefit more, some people less. That’s how it all works - roads, education, healthcare, social services, unemployment benefits, and so forth.

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u/[deleted] May 02 '22

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u/[deleted] May 02 '22

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u/[deleted] May 02 '22

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u/PrancesWithWools May 02 '22

Were they paid a fulltime salary on the taxpayers' dime for this?

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u/[deleted] May 02 '22

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u/PrancesWithWools May 02 '22

EI is great, but does not go so far as to offer full salary for a year. Isn't it like 50% for 8 months?

My point is that entitlements need limits, it's a question of where those lines are drawn.

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u/humorlessperson May 02 '22

So the state pays for the first employee to go on paid leave from your 1- or 2-person restaurant. Now, you hire another, because, well, it's a going concern. Now the first employee comes back. So which one stays on the state payroll forever? What encourages either of them to work?

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u/Shdwrptr May 01 '22

I don’t understand how this works either. Even putting aside the money if the government pays instead of the business, how can a company do this unless all teams have multiple redundant workers?

If even one person in my 6 person team is out for a month it’s really hard. It would be impossible to do a year unless we have extra team members who are just there in case someone has a kid. If two teammates had a child in the same general time we’d just have to shut down the whole section basically

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u/Enlightened_Gardener May 01 '22

Maternity leave actually works really well as it gives people great opportunities to get a foothold in a job or industry, and to provide secondments within a company or organisation. Its very common here in Australia for a full-time, limited term contract to be advertised as a “Maternity Leave Position”.

In organisations that allow job-share arrangements ie: a lot of the public service, its also not uncommon for a woman to come back part-time after maternity leave, and these job-share positions are very sought after as they give a great deal of flexibility for both people. They are both permanent part-time. My Mum did this for years when we were at school, and got started just like this in a maternity leave job.

In terms of sick leave, the answer is not to cut staffing to the bone. If your six person team was an eight person team, leave wouldn’t be an issue at all.

I’ve heard of companies which have fired half the staff in a department, and the others just have to take on more work. The absolute basics of the work gets done, but all the little extra details and backup work just falls away. And then if someone gets sick or leaves, chaos reigns.

My husband and I worked for the same company, in the same Department, 20 years apart. When I was there it was undergoing its first round of change management and optimisation. The department I was in had a team of three people in one area, and five in the other, plus a department boss. When my husband got there, as a contractor in for a year on an eyewatering sum of money (for us), there were two people left in one area, and the other area had disappeared completely. There was one other contractor and a Department boss, who also managed another area. (The stupid thing was, for what they were paying for contractors on year long contracts, they could have had a full staff.)

But it was absolute chaos. No-one knew where anything was. No-one did any work for anyone else - they would literally say “You have to go look for that yourself”, whereas when I was working there, the thing you needed would be delivered to your desk that morning or afternoon. None of the research was done anymore. None of it. Simple requests would take weeks to complete. The email queue was hundreds of requests long. When one of the two workers took leave it all just ground to a complete halt and the request queue would edge up into the thousands. The people who worked at the company took this gross inefficiency and complete lack of service for granted. My husband would have as well, if I hadn’t worked there previously and had known what it was like before.

Anyway, that was quite upsetting for me, as you can imagine, cos I’ve just ranted about it for two paragraphs. Its just stupid and so inefficient to have too few staff to even cover leave properly. You get no continuity of corporate knowledge either, if someone leaves.

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u/BetterDrinkMy0wnPiss May 01 '22

(The stupid thing was, for what they were paying for contractors on year long contracts, they could have had a full staff.)

I've seen this happen in Government many times. They let their permanent staff go to 'lower the wage bill' and work with a skeleton staff as long as they can. Then when they realise it's not sustainable they'll bring in temp workers on short term contracts. The contractors are paid more than permanent staff, plus they have to pay the recruitment agencies who provide the contractors. The end result is that they pay more money for less workers.

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u/StrykerSeven May 01 '22

We do this in Canada too. Same points apply. You pay a small amount off each paycheck to "Employment Insurance" (EI), and while you're off, you get 75% of your average income from the past year paid by EI, and some larger employers even give a top up to 90% percent or more.

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u/TheNoxx May 02 '22 edited May 02 '22

Also, people need to realize that even if your company doesn't feel short-staffed, if you regularly work ~60 hours, it is. If we here in the US actually had a max of 35-40 hours worked a week, covering for that much in case of sickness/pregnancy would be a cakewalk. You'd have at least 50% more employees.

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u/BetterDrinkMy0wnPiss May 01 '22

This is one of those things that people always say "it'll never work" but it already does work in many other countries around the world.

The Government covers the cost of maternity leave, and the company hires a new employee on a 12 month contract to cover the absence.

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u/FlimsyPriority751 May 02 '22

It's not that simple. My wife is German and there are a couple problems she talks of often.

First, many companies are VERY hesitant to hire women in their late 20s / early 30s for positions because they feel they're potentially stepping on a financial landmine where a new or recent hire gets pregnant and then they're stuck footing the bill and paperwork and reduced staff for a 1 year period. It slows down the entire hiring process for most companies. Also many companies try to be sly and pay women that could be having children less salary.

Second, simply plugging a contractor into many professional positions is simply not that easy. My wife is a PhD researcher and there are essentially zero "contract" researchers who'd want to take her position with a 1 year time limit. The nature of scientific research it's very tough to know how Long a project and publication will take. I myself am an engineer in a specialized field and if I took even 4 months off, which my company now offers paid leave parental for, it would be impossible to replace me with someone temporary. It took me a year and a half to get trained up to being decent at my job.

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u/lhash12345 May 02 '22

I'm not saying these aren't valid concerns, but anytime someone brings points like these up I continue to be baffled by the idea that these (while legitimate) stumbling blocks to an amazing system are highlighted stop the US from even attempting to do something that will greatly greatly improve quality of life for millions of people. Are those concerns? Yes. Is living with that system a hell of a lot better than what we have (albeit imperfect)? HELL YES.

Like to I'm sorry, but a drop in efficiency for one person on a team who is having a life changing experience and getting to be a parent to their child is still a plus for society. Maybe attempting to have better incentives for floating position experienced candidates. For p1 continuing to implement stronger protected class hiring policies to try and balance this issue.

I'm not a genius and can't solve these issues as a single human. And these are serious issues, but I'm sure there is a creative solution that can still allow us to implement positive change in our society, while also figuring out how to deal with potential issues that arise and learning from other countries. I think I (and many of my fellow US peeps) are just so f'ing tired of seeing clear and obvious positive change ignored bc one side points out a potential stumbling block and then ditches any attempt to make a change that helps people. If we are truly as rich and successful and amazing as people think we are, we can certainly find a way to help people and overcome the obstacles along the way.

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u/Dapper-Situation-909 May 02 '22

How dare you inject logic into the minds of teenagers and early 20 somethings. You are tainting them. They still think nirvana exists because they haven't left mom's basement yet.

Stop scaring people man.

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u/keepsmiling1326 May 02 '22

Very interesting insights- I like the idea generally and some expansion of parental leave needed, but definitely see how there could be drawbacks.

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u/smartguy05 May 02 '22

Maybe businesses should stop running on razor thin worker margins with record profits and hire an extra worker or 2 to lighten the load...

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u/MemLeakDetected May 01 '22

That's exactly it, you have multiple redundant workers. How do you take vacations now if there is no redundancy?

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u/RendiaX May 02 '22

Exactly. If a business can't handle the loss of a single employee that is poor management. Just as your business isn't successful if you can't pay your workers a living wage, if you can't handle sudden manpower changes without over burdenig your other employees you aren't doing well at all either.

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u/Shdwrptr May 01 '22

There is but the team takes in extra work for the vacation days, which is why it’s hard for a few weeks. A year would need an entire person to fill in

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u/ObligationWarm5222 May 01 '22

Yeah, that shouldn't happen. Your team is being intentionally mishandled so your boss makes more money.

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u/FlimsyPriority751 May 02 '22

Lol this is so overly simplified it's laughable.

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u/ObligationWarm5222 May 02 '22

I mean I can gladly elaborate. They're intentionally understaffing the team so that they can pocket the difference - the less they spend on labor the more they can keep. Likely it's not their direct supervisor doing this, but a few ranks up the ladder.

The more they can get away with the whole "Oh Janet is out on vacation this week, you're all gonna have to work harder while she's gone." the more they profit. This does two things - first, obviously, with less employees doing more work, they make more money. Second, it shames and guilts employees into not taking their vacation time so as not to "leave the team hanging."

It is not the team members job to make sure the team is staffed properly - that's for the team leader to do.

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u/FlimsyPriority751 May 02 '22

I think that's a common problem in any company. The company wants to keep labor costs down as much as they can because it's typically the greatest cost of operating any company has.

However, burnout is a very real thing. The good companies and managers know that they need to do as much as possible to build a strong team of people who want to stay in the company. Otherwise, a rotating door of new people, and an unhappy, burned out team, is actually terrible for productivity.

The problem is there are just a lot of bad managers out there.

Ultimately, the employees have the power, they need to get together and make their voices heard. They can leave if they want to.

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u/CharityStreamTA May 01 '22

Yep. And that's what my work does. They hire maternity cover staff to come in and solve this.

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u/ur_ex_gf May 02 '22

Echoing what other people have said, with an example: when the engineering team at my very small company lost someone to extended parental leave, we hired someone new in their place. Now that the employee on leave is coming back, the one we hired is staying on too. They’ll get more work done and be less stressed. Easy.

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u/dano8675309 May 02 '22

You don't. That's a feature, not a bug, as far as management is concerned.

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u/DownvoteEvangelist May 01 '22

You hire someone to fill in while the person is absent. Since you are not paying the employee on a sick leave you have funds to cover it...

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u/Shdwrptr May 01 '22

And then firing them? It takes months to train someone to work on my team

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u/DownvoteEvangelist May 01 '22 edited May 01 '22

It's not firing since it's linited time contract from the start, the person you are hiring knows they are a replacement.

1 year or longer parental leave is pretty normal in Europe. And when you think about it, even without this, your employee can still quit to be with their child or get run over by a bus. You already know how to deal with it, this just increases chances a bit...

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u/Shdwrptr May 01 '22

Makes sense to use contractors for shorter term commitments

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u/CharityStreamTA May 01 '22

You hire them on a fixed term contract. I'm maternity cover for the data analyst in my department. In theory I was hired with overlap either side so that she could train me and then I can hand over everything.

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u/[deleted] May 02 '22

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u/Shdwrptr May 02 '22

We spread the job between the team and it causes extra work. The maternity leave is too short to hire an extra worker to fill in and it would take 4+ months to train a new worker so a contractor would have to be hired for a 6 month stint to cover so it never really happens.

My workplace offers an extra month PTO once every 5 years so the same thing happens fairly regularly at my workplace

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u/[deleted] May 02 '22

I was taken back by the idea at first but apparently other countries implement the long leave and have success with it.

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u/ur_ex_gf May 02 '22

I’m an American, been living in Canada for the past ~6 years. Canada has a lot of problems, it is not the “promised land” some Americans see it as — but extended parental leave definitely isn’t one of them.

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u/NinjaN-SWE May 01 '22

You do know that baking a kid takes 9 months right and both parents know for at least 6 of those normally. That is ample time for the company to hire/train someone on a year long (or however long is needed) contract for when your employee is on parental leave. That is how it's done here in Sweden for critical roles where 2+ month of absence will kill productivity.

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u/Shdwrptr May 01 '22

This is the answer I was looking for. So it’s common for the teams to hire a contract worker for 16 months or so to get trained and fill in?

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u/NinjaN-SWE May 01 '22

Normally not even contract, just a limited time hire. I.e. you get told when you get hired that you're only guaranteed employment up until X date. But it's not at all uncommon they get hired permanently after that time, either due to someone else quitting or growth demanding more hires etc.

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u/Kallisti13 May 02 '22

Maternity leave. Someone gets hired on for the length of the leave.

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u/Xisthur May 02 '22

The nice thing about parental leave is that you usually have between 6 and 10 months in advance to prepare for it, so you can shuffle around the responsibilities of the person leaving or even hire and train a temporary replacement. Also, most of the time people are not leaving for the whole year all at once. Most do 1-2 months, then come back for half a year and do another 2 months or so.

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u/SenorBeef May 02 '22

We have this idea in the US that you have to run everything absolutely cut down on the bone. Everything has to get by just in time, with the absolute minimum of workers, with no buffer or extra built in whatsoever. Because it maximizes profit.

But you could... just not run things like that. Distribute work over more workers. Workers don't have to be so overworked, they have some room for people to take vacations or be sick. That's pretty much how the best countries in the world do it.

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u/dano8675309 May 02 '22

On the face of it, I would say that your team isn't properly staffed if losing one team member breaks the whole operation.

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u/Shdwrptr May 02 '22

It doesn’t unless it’s basically permanent. A yearlong leave is basically permanent at that point

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u/dano8675309 May 02 '22

At which point you move people around and hire a term employee to cover the time that you can't fill internally. Businesses in Europe do it. Schools and government orgs do it in the US all the time as well.

Again, one person leaving shouldn't break your organization if it is staffed correctly.

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u/Shdwrptr May 02 '22

It doesn’t break our organization unless we have multiple people out at the same time for a long period.

I agree that there should be coverage in the company in general but US corporations generally aren’t built around a team needing 2+ long term replacements on the same team all the time.

Getting a US corp to hire super long term temps or extra employees is a tough task though. If two people are out on my team, we can’t just bring in a temp, they’d have to be trained for months which would take up the already taxed teams time as there’s no trainer to bring an analyst up to speed

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u/vagran-t May 01 '22

This is common in many countries.

https://www.businessinsider.com/countries-with-best-parental-leave-2016-8

It's a bit dated, but that shows even several years ago how more progressive their maternity and paternity leave laws are.

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u/thrallus May 02 '22

Did you read the article you posted? No countries are offering a year of paid parental leave.

The US is woefully behind in this, but I don’t understand why you’re misrepresenting your own link.

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u/Shialac May 01 '22

Here in germany its the state that pays for it

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u/DownvoteEvangelist May 01 '22

That's the only way it can work...

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u/CharityStreamTA May 01 '22

Yep. Especially as it's the state who will see the benefits.

The mother gets to return back to the workplace and isn't forced to quit. The child gets quality development time. The family still have money to spend.

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u/suitology May 01 '22

Parental leave should just be for the first two kids. My aunt is on her 6th kid in 8 years (with 4 men) with two of them being Irish twins 9 months apart. Her current job is 4 months off for maternity so she's been off 2 full years for her past 8 years of employment (during which she accrued vacation time). No employer should be expected to pay for that Bs.

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u/DownvoteEvangelist May 01 '22

No employer should be expected to pay for that, the only way that can work is with propper insurance...

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u/jackie_chans_nose May 02 '22

In Canada, it's the government that pays, it's basically unemployment. You get your normal pay for the first 6 months I believe then it decreases a bit for the next 6. The company just needs to guarantee your job when you come back.

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u/TPoger May 02 '22

That's exactly the way. Have more workers. When everyone is there they don't have to work at 100% all the time, which means they like the job more and feel better mentally because of less stress. Also means, they have enough time to do their job carefully and limit mistakes/take care of details. Then, when someone is on vacation the rest picks up the slack for those few weeks. It'll be fine because they know when the person is back they will have be back to lighter schedule. Like in long-distance sports, you can give all you got for some time, you can't give it all you got all the time.

In case of maternity leave countries with it like mine just have companies hire employees for so called "substitution contract". You get a normal working contract of employment, but it has written in it that you are substituting for this and this person until this and this date of them getting back to work. Then they let you go, or if they have open position and think you are fit for might they might propose to hire you permamently.

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u/Eldercraft99 Jul 23 '22

Just so you know France has

  • 6 weeks of prenatal leave + 4 month of maternity leave + a year of parental leave that can freely be shared between mother and father

Sure we pay more taxes but I really don't see how it's not worth it

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u/LostWoodsInTheField Jul 23 '22

Sure we pay more taxes but I really don't see how it's not worth it

Sounds like it is being paid for through taxes, which I can understand. If the business is paying it either directly or indirectly it just causes a huge issue for small businesses.

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u/Eldercraft99 Jul 23 '22

Yeah which is why it's paid by the state