Where do you work?
At my office, we have a meeting room that is kinda dedicated to it and it has a dorm room sized fridge in it. My extremely non-PC director went in there last week with his cup of coffee and came out joking “there’s no milk in the fridge?!”
I love my office. It’s a good thing our ladies have a good sense of humor!
^ haha that’s awesome
we have a religious prayer room - i’ve thought of taking a nap in there more than once.
women breast feed anywhere from 6 months to 2 years… How much do you think that room costs?
Maybe they don’t even want to take off that long.
^ The typical parental/matnerity leave in developed countries is 12 to 18 months. True, some women may not want to take all that off. Our company does not have a lactation room though, mothers just generally take the time. If the U.S. wants to decrease its reliance on immigration and have more than just poor minorities producing kids, they’re going to need to make having kids a bit easier on parents.
Is that paid 18 months of leave?
^ I think in Canada it is paid through EI. Only a %, up to a maximum and taxable just like regular income, 12 months.
And yet somehow we’re all here.
While I get the gyst of what you’re saying it’s not quite what you think. Paid leave is only 15 weeks at 55% of salary. So a lactation room would still be likely.
That being said, paid maternity leave would be great here, particularly for low income families although I would only be in favor of it if each woman were only entitled to it twice in their lives and must have held a job for at least six months directly prior.
Canada The Canadian government mandates both a leave and a benefits component, the latter being administered by provincial employment insurance plans. Depending on the length of employment history and the hours worked, new mothers can take between 17 and 52 weeks of leave from their jobs. Their employers are required to accept the employees back into their jobs, or the equivalent, at the end of the mandated leave at the same rate of pay with the same employment benefits.
On top of mandating maternity leave, the government offers paid leave for one or both parents through Canada’s employment insurance plan. A pregnant employee or new mother can take a paid maternity leave of up to 15 weeks. Either the mother or father can take 35 weeks of parental leave after the baby is born or adopted. The parents can share the leave however they choose. If eligible for the program, the benefits equal 55% of the parent’s average weekly insurable wage, up to a maximum of $485 per week. For low-income families, the rate of benefits can increase to up to 80%, with the same maximum of $485 per week. Employment insurance benefits are taxable in the same way as wages.
Read more: Maternity Leave Basics: Canada Vs. The U.S. | Investopedia http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0512/maternity-leave-basics-canada-vs.-the-u.s…aspx#ixzz3z1GCPFys Follow us: Investopedia on Facebook
You must have never encounter the La Leche League. They’re militant about breastfeeding believing going up to and older than 5 years is totally normal and the healthiest way to go. The group is crazy, like PETA crazy, when it comes to breastfeeding. I’d love to say they’re a small group of whacky women, but they’re pretty huge.
I find it very distrubing when a child is old enough to actually lift the mom’s shirt and go for the breast. I’ve seen that. I didn’t want to see that.
Just reading it was bad enough.
Paid leave is 52 weeks here. 17 weeks for maternal health (which most companies top up to 100% salary as a short term disability) and then the 35 weeks of parental leave at 55% salary to a cap. All of that is funded via employment insurance (other than top up). The reasoning is that it will require a temp to fill the job who is now not on employment insurance because they have a job. Really cost neutral, or at least approximately so. And you need to be in a position a year before taking leave in Canada. In the real world, mothers in Canada take a full year and don’t breastfeed at work generally.
Those folks are pretty nutty.
I must have misunderstood it when I read it. Anyhow, like I said, nothing against it, but it’s really not a big deal. Canadians act like its proof that their country is heaven on earth, but I’m raising a kid right now with only one parent working and it’s not the end of the world.
While it’s hard to single out any one particular factor for why I’ve been able to do this, I like to think it’s partially because we live in the land of opportunity, the greatest nation on the face of the earth with the best medical care and the greatest people.
U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!
So let me get this straight.
Three months before you plan to get pregnant, you need to find a job. (Three months plus nine months of gestation equals twelve months.)
Then, after having said baby, your employer must pay 100% of your salary for four months, then taxpayers must pay 55% of your salary for another eight months. Additionally, your employer must pay a temp to do your job for a full year (presumably at the same cost they would have paid you).
So somebody (either the company or society as a whole) has to pay $1.70 for $1 worth of work. (4/12 x 1.00 + 8/12 x .55 = .70, or 70%)
How is this cost neutral?
It’s not neutral to the employer, nor required for them to pay the top up. Firms do so because they have to otherwise no one will work for them, its just standard compensation practice. Generally I find professionals get treated alot better in Canada, probably due to supply/demand. Our U.S. workers do not get these benefits as they aren’t needed to competitively source folks in the U.S. Also, many employers demand repayment of the top up if you don’t return to work or do a certain number of months of work post-leave. On the public side, the idea is that because EI (not general tax revenue) is paying the mother, someone else that would otherwise be getting EI payments is working her job. The mother stepping out of the workforce adds a job for someone else coming off the EI payroll. Make sense? It’s not perfect, sure, but it works pretty good. It’s good for families. And Canada isn’t even really the role model on this, the Nordics are even more generous.
^ Listen Greenman, this is obviously too progressive for your puny American mind to comprehend. All you need to do is look at the long line of successful Canadian companies ranging from Blackberry (Canada’s Apple) to Bombardier (Canada’s Boeing) to learn a thing or two. To ease you through the process, you could put some Bryan Adams (Canada’s Sinatra) on in the background.
Canada rode the natural resources boom a little too hard, now most likely there will be a period of adjustment.
I actually do see the value to the policy but enjoy making fun of Canada, it would just have to be implimented differently in the US. We have too many people that abuse every system made available to them here.
America: the only country in the world where people take a moral objection against receiving such paucities as vacation time, maternity leave and an education that won’t financially cripple you.
Ye fucking haw