Chipping Away at Family Leave

hippiemom

by Judith Warner

An interesting new chapter in the family wars has been playing out lately under the radar. In response to pressure from business groups, the Department of Labor has put out an official request for information on the Family and Medical Leave Act to find out if, as critics contend, the law is too generous and places an undue burden on employers who are required to comply with it.

Many of you may already be rolling your eyes. The United States, after all, ranks as one of the world’s most backward nations when it comes to family and medical leave benefits. A recent study from the McGill University Institute for Health and Social Policy in Montreal found that of 173 countries surveyed, 168 guaranteed women paid maternity leave. The United States – along with Lesotho, Liberia, Papua New Guinea and Swaziland – was not one of them. Eighty-six million working Americans have no paid sick days to use to care for ill children, and nearly one in two workers – 59 million in all – has no paid sick leave at all. (For more sad statistics, see the McGill study.)

The Family and Medical Leave Act, which President Clinton signed into law back in 1993, offers only the most basic and restricted protections: 12 weeks of unpaid leave for new parents or those who need time off to tend to their own or a relative’s “serious illness.” Yet, these restrictions, a coalition of business groups is now coming forward to insist, simply aren’t restrictive enough. They say employees are abusing their right to medical leave, taking off work for mental health days, for cosmetic surgery and for things like “pink eye, ingrown toenails and colds,” as the Orwellian-sounding National Coalition to Protect Family Leave, an industry group, has put it.

In the coming weeks, the business groups will be submitting a host of comments of this nature to the Department of Labor. (If you’d like to weigh in, perhaps with a reality check, you can do so, before Feb. 16, at this Web site.)

The point of all this, the coalition’s Web site says, is to “preserve the integrity of the system and better serve those Congress intended to protect.”

Call me paranoid, but I’m not buying it.

Remember what a protracted drama it was to get our anemic little version of family leave passed into law in the first place? When it was first proposed in Congress, in 1985, it was meant to provide 18 weeks of unpaid parental leave for workers in companies with one employee or more. By the early 1990s, when President George H.W. Bush vetoed it twice, the act had been scaled down to its current paltry offerings, but it nonetheless sparked the particular ire of social conservatives, who viewed it as an implicit endorsement of working motherhood. (In 1991, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, now House Minority Leader, called it “another example of yuppie entitlement.”)

The business groups that sought to defeat the family leave act way back when (including the Coalition to Protect Family Leave’s twice-removed parent, The Society for Human Resource Management) have been agitating since the mid-1990s to scale it back into virtual nonexistence. What they want now is to tinker with the bill so that only workers with the most “serious” medical conditions requiring extended leave will be covered. They want to make sure workers don’t take “intermittent” leave – i.e. a couple of hours off here and there to go to the doctor – but instead only avail themselves of the substantial chunks of time off that will put a serious dent in their income.

The idea, it seems, is to make taking sick leave so financially painful that only those without the slightest chance of dragging themselves to the office will do it. It’s the same sort of logic that underlay President Bush’s recent foray into health care reform: to cut health costs, change behavior. Get people to consume less health care (by essentially punishing those who overuse health care thanks to their “gold-plated, deluxe” health benefits) and … we won’t have to spend so much on health care.

What’s interesting to me here is that it clearly isn’t politically acceptable anymore to attack family and medical leave by bashing working mothers. Our current villain du jour is the health care glutton, who consumes doctor’s visits like so many donuts, sloughing off the burdens of his waste onto the hard-working and the health-care abstemious.

The health care glutton is the new millennium’s version of Ronald Reagan’s welfare queen, whose appetite for spawning children and sucking down public funds knew no limit, and whose specter ultimately led our country to accept a situation in which low-income mothers were forced back to work without child care or medical benefits for their families.

If the past is any guide, the appearance of the health care glutton may portend similarly bad news for those lucky American workers who are entitled to sick days and family leave, or who enjoy adequate health insurance benefits. If we let it happen.

http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/

surferdude

Good luck on the social change required. It's been a long time since I've seen a real visionary leader in the US (Canada's in the same boat), one willing to implement plan that doesn't have an immediate payoff but never-the-less makes the country stronger, better and fairer in the future.

Russian Csars used to implement social change plans with a 400 year time line. Our politicians won't do a thing unless they think it will help them in the next election.

cincybearcat

You know there are 2 sides to FMLA and there are plenty of people that ABUSE the hell out of it and play a game...and plenty of dcotors willing to play the game with them. It's ridiculous in a lot of ways.

surferdude

cincybearcat wrote:

You know there are 2 sides to FMLA and there are plenty of people that ABUSE the hell out of it and play a game...and plenty of dcotors willing to play the game with them. It's ridiculous in a lot of ways.

No paid paternity/maternity leave is archaic. It's the 21st century.

Last Exodus

I had first hand experience with Family Leave when my father was diagnosed with Cancer. My employer forced me to use every day of my sick time and vacation time before they would consider leave. When I requested the leave to attend to my father's illness, it was first denied to me illeglay. Here is the scary part. I worked for the fucking government.......Suffice it to say I dont work for the government.

cincybearcat

surferdude wrote:

No paid paternity/maternity leave is archaic. It's the 21st century.

I woudl say that it is a nice benefit for a company to offer to differentiate itself. I question why it is someone's right to have paid time off for pregnancy.

Though in reality sonce it is such a common proctice a plan should be in place to accommodate it for a period of time. Look at that...I argued against myself and changed my mind in the same post.

Here's the thing, it is abused by many and they could ruin it for the rest. not pregnancy, but FMLA for other things.

bryanfury

cincybearcat wrote:

I woudl say that it is a nice benefit for a company to offer to differentiate itself. I question why it is someone's right to have paid time off for pregnancy.

Though in reality sonce it is such a common proctice a plan should be in place to accommodate it for a period of time. Look at that...I argued against myself and changed my mind in the same post.

Here's the thing, it is abused by many and they could ruin it for the rest. not pregnancy, but FMLA for other things.

Mit Romney, is that you?

paid time off for a birth is a must. i think its a disgrace that the mother has to take unpaid leave.

know1

surferdude wrote:

No paid paternity/maternity leave is archaic. It's the 21st century.

If the employees do not like it, they can work elsewhere. Employers who want to offer it are just that much more attractive to potential employees.

know1

Last Exodus wrote:

I had first hand experience with Family Leave when my father was diagnosed with Cancer. My employer forced me to use every day of my sick time and vacation time before they would consider leave. When I requested the leave to attend to my father's illness, it was first denied to me illeglay. Here is the scary part. I worked for the fucking government.......Suffice it to say I dont work for the government.

Why shouldn't they use up the vacation and sick time first? It seems only logical to me.

Last Exodus

know1 wrote:

Why shouldn't they use up the vacation and sick time first? It seems only logical to me.

Family and medical leave is UNPAID time off when used for that purpose.

know1

Last Exodus wrote:

Family and medical leave is UNPAID time off when used for that purpose.

Right, so you use up the paid time off first and then move to unpaid. I would think that's what the employee would prefer. I know I would.

Last Exodus

know1 wrote:

Right, so you use up the paid time off first and then move to unpaid. I would think that's what the employee would prefer. I know I would.

In my case, the employer thought they had the right to deny me the leave, which they did not have under the law. The point was that employers, even government employers, abuse family and medical leave. I agree with it.

soulsinging

know1 wrote:

If the employees do not like it, they can work elsewhere. Employers who want to offer it are just that much more attractive to potential employees.

how christian of you... put women out on the street for having a child.

soulsinging

hippiemom wrote:

A recent study from the McGill University Institute for Health and Social Policy in Montreal found that of 173 countries surveyed, 168 guaranteed women paid maternity leave. The United States – along with Lesotho, Liberia, Papua New Guinea and Swaziland – was not one of them.

this sickens me.

hippiemom wrote:

By the early 1990s, when President George H.W. Bush vetoed it twice, the act had been scaled down to its current paltry offerings, but it nonetheless sparked the particular ire of social conservatives, who viewed it as an implicit endorsement of working motherhood. (In 1991, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, now House Minority Leader, called it “another example of yuppie entitlement.”)

i think this is hitting pretty close to the truth... keep those women at home and out of the workplace. dont they know their place?

well, that and the fact that humanity means nothing to most business owners who see human beings as nothing more than a dollar sign.

decides2dream

Last Exodus wrote:

I had first hand experience with Family Leave when my father was diagnosed with Cancer. My employer forced me to use every day of my sick time and vacation time before they would consider leave. When I requested the leave to attend to my father's illness, it was first denied to me illeglay. Here is the scary part. I worked for the fucking government.......Suffice it to say I dont work for the government.

it's truly sad. :(
and i have to say, firsthand knowledge...the fed government is the FIRST to try and deny their workers such rights if they can. i could go on and on...but i won't.

however, in regards to the thread topic...it really IS scary that many consider us 'the' baramometer of presonal freedoms and such, and yet we ARE so far behind other industiralized countires to such issues as this. obviously, they manage to remain productive and adjust...why can't we ever learn from other models?

deadmosquito

bryanfury wrote:

Mit Romney, is that you?

paid time off for a birth is a must. i think its a disgrace that the mother has to take unpaid leave.

why? the business didn't ask their employee to have a child. why should the business have to pay that person if she chooses to do something that is going to take her away from the workplace, when they already have to pay someone else to come in and pick up the slack?

soulsinging

deadmosquito wrote:

why? the business didn't ask their employee to have a child. why should the business have to pay that person if she chooses to do something that is going to take her away from the workplace, when they already have to pay someone else to come in and pick up the slack?

so any woman who gets pregnant should summarily be fired? women should be forced to choose between pregnancy and their job/career?

hippiemom

know1 wrote:

If the employees do not like it, they can work elsewhere. Employers who want to offer it are just that much more attractive to potential employees.

Time to recover from birth and bond with your child should not be a privilege reserved only to those fortuanate enough to be able to market themselves to a number of employers. It's a universal human need, something that every country outside of a few desperately poor African republics (and us, of course) seems to grasp.

VictoryGin

deadmosquito wrote:

why? the business didn't ask their employee to have a child. why should the business have to pay that person if she chooses to do something that is going to take her away from the workplace, when they already have to pay someone else to come in and pick up the slack?

this isn't just about maternity leave, even though that situation is quite sad in this country. men should have ample time for paternity leave here too. and people should be able to take care of their sick relatives (or else what--pay thousands of dollars they don't have for someone else to do so?) it's pathetic and i would not consider our current policies in line with family values. if people really were about "family values" perhaps they'd actually value families. it's ironic that our government supports traditional family structure through other means but yet punishes those families in this way.

and the statistic about paid sick leave is idiotic. the 59 million americans who don't have paid sick leave may be even more motivated to go into work and then everyone else gets sick and productivity goes down. not to mention more people getting sick and having to navigate our shitty excuse of a health care system.

i can't believe they're complaining about people with pink eye staying at home. that is so contagious. this whole thing is just ridiculous.

soulsinging

VictoryGin wrote:

this isn't just about maternity leave, even though that situation is quite sad in this country. men should have ample time for paternity leave here too. and people should be able to take care of their sick relatives (or else what--pay thousands of dollars they don't have for someone else to do so?) it's pathetic and i would not consider our current policies in line with family values. if people really were about "family values" perhaps they'd actually value families. it's ironic that our government supports traditional family structure through other means but yet punishes those families in this way.

and the statistic about paid sick leave is idiotic. the 59 million americans who don't have paid sick leave may be even more motivated to go into work and then everyone else gets sick and productivity goes down. not to mention more people getting sick and having to navigate our shitty excuse of a health care system.

i can't believe they're complaining about people with pink eye staying at home. that is so contagious. this whole thing is just ridiculous.

haven't you figured out yet that family values has nothing to do with respecting or supporting families, it just means making sure a man gets to pick a wife, she counts herself lucky to be chosen, and then stays home like she's supposed to.

gue_barium

soulsinging wrote:

how christian of you... put women out on the street for having a child.

Hey, that's what the Mission is for.