Petition to pass paid leave nationwide delivered to all members of Congress
abcnews.go.com
A petition to pass paid leave on a federal level in the United States was delivered to all members of Congress Wednesday morning.

The United States is one of seven countries globally that does not have any guaranteed form of paid leave, the petition states.

    • Thassodar@lemm.eeEnglish
      6·
      4 months ago

      I may be uneducated because I’ve never taken advantage of it, but isn’t FMLA a form of this? I had coworkers disappear for 3 - 6 months for roughly 2/3 their pay and they don’t get fired because of FMLA.

      • ASK_ME_ABOUT_LOOM@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        11·
        4 months ago

        FMLA has no pay guarantee. You can’t lose your job due to a qualified event (for now, just wait until the supreme Court gets its hands on it, I guess)

      • silly goose meekah@lemmy.world
        9·
        4 months ago

        Idk, seems to me that the continuation of pay was your company being nice:

        The FMLA entitles eligible employees of covered employers to take unpaid, job-protected leave for specified family and medical reasons with continuation of group health insurance coverage under the same terms and conditions as if the employee had not taken leave.

        https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fmla

        • Kerensky1101@lemmy.world
          6·
          4 months ago

          While FMLA can be used in the case of a pregnancy you have to meet the following conditions first:

          In order to be eligible to take leave under the FMLA, an employee must (1) work for a covered employer, (2) work 1,250 hours during the 12 months prior to the start of leave, (3) work at a location where 50 or more employees work at that location or within 75 miles of it, and (4) have worked for the employer for 12 months.

          So basically if you work for a smaller company, or just started, you can’t use it.

          Also note the per location employee rule. You could have a large nationwide business that purposely keeps the regional employment low in order to circumvent FMLA payouts

      • my_hat_stinks@programming.dev
        7·
        4 months ago

        Not really, where I am full-time employees are legally entitled to a minimum 28 paid days off per year (including public holidays at employer’s discretion) and that’s still low compared to some of the better European countries. My understanding is that the US does not require any paid time off and this petition is to fix that.

        3-6 months maternity leave at 66% pay isn’t necessarily great either, here we have 52 weeks maternity leave starting at 90% pay for 6 weeks then the lower of 90% pay or a fixed weekly amount for another 33 weeks. Returning to work in the first 6 months entitles you to the same job, in the second 6 months an equivalent job (equal pay, location, etc). There’s also 1-2 weeks paternity leave for other involved adults (eg father or partner) and the option to share up to 50 weeks of the maternity leave entitlement with them. And those are just legal minimums, for instance my work offers much better paternity leave than just a couple of weeks.