I really feel so terrible for Jennifer. It was bad enough that her child had passed away, but it was pouring salt on her wounds when her employer chose to take away her leave days.
I think the old adage applies here, "make sure everything is in writing". She was promised a promotion, but she did not sign a contract and nothing was set in stone.
I learned to put everything in writing the hard way. If something is in writing, even if it is an email, then it is hard for the company to go back on their words. Having an actual contract is better, but having just about anything written down is better than just about anything verbal.
I hope Jennifer recovers, and I hope that the company she has transferred to treats her better.
I've yet to see a case getting a promised promotion in writing is reasonable for either side. On the employee side you're basically signing something that says you'll work <x> months at your current rate and not leave when the company has already chosen you anyways. On the company side you're just exposing yourself to risk for something already covered by the hiring process. Both sides should be extremely adverse to either case of exception and let the hiring process do what it's made to do: this.
Some things you want to get in writing, other things you don't want to plan for unless it's in writing.
You will never get a promotion promised in writing. We also didn’t hear the company’s side. I would bet that their version of the events did not include a promise of a promotion. This happens all the time.
Do these people just sit around and spend time coming up with ways to screw others over? How the fuck is this thing even legal, let alone ethical? Makes me so mad
Nah, I don't think so. Most rules come about because one person, at some point, abused the policy, and so the company tries to make a more explicit rule to prevent the abuse in the future.
I don't know the specifics of this case, but maternity leave is absolutely something that has been abused. My spouse worked with a woman who got hired while she was pregnant, had the baby and took advantage of the company's extremely generous paid maternity leave, and then came back in and quit on her first day back. From the company's standpoint, this hire was simply a cash giveaway and a huge loss.
The key word is here "already earned". Denying that doesn't make any sense, any which way we look at it.
Still, punish the 95% (or whatever very high number) for the shitty behavior of other 5% of people? I understand it is business and companies need to protect their profits, but this is ridiculous.
> Still, punish the 95% (or whatever very high number) for the shitty behavior of other 5% of people? I understand it is business and companies need to protect their profits, but this is ridiculous.
Yeah, I agree. Just pointing out that this stuff rarely comes from mustache-twirling villains and more often is just a misguided attempt to solve some other related problem. Cutting off commission that has already been earned sounds pretty bad.
I'd bet money that the policies don't literally say "we will claw back commissions you've already earned if you go on leave". The scenario is almost certainly that there's a specific point where commissions are earned as a matter of policy, and that policy doesn't align with the informal understanding of when you earn a commission or the timeframe of the work that earned you the commission.
Yeah, what next, keep paying people even though they are in the hospital sick, and call it "sick leave"? That's just giving people cash in return for nothing. Why are they trying to give us a communist dictatorship?
> Do these people just sit around and spend time coming up with ways to screw others over?
Yes, they literally do (or hire consultants to do it).
I went to school with lots of people who ended up in management consulting. One in particular worked at Deloitte and specialized in "human capital".
Most of their projects were to figure out how an organization could drastically reduce pension/retirement benefits for existing workers legally, while also offering much worse plans for new hires that looked good on paper.
They were paid around $1,800/day/consultant for all of these cost-cutting projects.
(This is not at all an uncommon story in the enterprise consulting world, by the way.)
There aren't enough details in the article for me to know what's going on here, but my first thought was "the commissions are being paid to whoever is leading the team in her absence". The crucial (and unanswered) question is whether she would have received commissions which she "didn't earn" based on work her replacement did in her absence.
Sure, but the bereavement leave for a child should be much more than 8 weeks. And it costs so little to provide since it is relatively rare in the developed world.
While no doubt someone will never fully emotionally get over something so tragic, sometimes the best thing for you is to get back on the horse and your work and your life and move on.
I'm not arguing against bereavement leave. I'm making the very real point that moving on is a choice and that 8 weeks or 80 weeks isn't going to make a difference. At some point you have to move on and going back to work is one of the best things to get your mind off of it. But this is really pedantic so that's all I say to this point.
Exactly. I had 30 days bereavement leave when my mother died but decided to return to work after a week. It was a world of difference from just having the week.
There are practical reasons for bereavement leave, too. My father-in-law passed away suddenly. He was a CPA and died during tax season. Wrapping up his business, organizing a funeral and executing his will took my wife a couple weeks.
This seems a little naive. No company offers more than 8 weeks of bereavement. Most places I have seen are about 3 days. So 6 weeks is extremely generous if that is the benchmark.
Yes, what I’m saying is that 3 days bereavement for the death of a child is pathologically inhumane, even if it is depressingly common. It’s not “naive” to call out terrible things, even when they’ve been so around that we have come to think of them as “normal.”
the differentiation that needs to be made is for recovery vs bonding. it sounds like the company in question has that now. bereavement would be good to cover folx that otherwise wouldn’t have this (eg miscarriage). but going from 8 to 6 weeks for the last weeks of pregnancy and first weeks of postpartum is pretty brutal.
it took me 5-6 weeks after giving birth to be able to drive again for short distances. won’t even go into the other indignities and needs in that period.
What was needed was to be human even if just for a moment. Employees acting on behalf of companies tend to do the very worst things that they would never condone if it happened to them or someone they love. In this case the obvious thing would be to give the person as much time off as needed to recover, not to ask her to come back in because there wasn't any maternity leave to be taken. This whole adherence to 'the letter' rather than 'the spirit' is highly annoying.
It's not controversial, it's the HR literal interpretation of their policy. I cannot stress enough that HR is NOT your friend. They only care about protecting the company's ass. Never confide anything to an HR person, it will go straight to management and they will use it against you.
Spoken like someone who's never been through childbirth!
Not that I have either, but having seen it a few times I don't think I'd recover quickly even without the bereavement. The blood being mopped up - literally with a mop - after my wife's episiotomy was like something from a horror movie.
I don't think they let you drive for 6 weeks after a caesarian in the UK.
I'm in the US and a coworker came to work the next day after giving birth. There is no time allotted for maternity leave and she had already used her vacation time at the beginning of the year before she was pregnant. I was at a charity event with the CEO and he was laughing about it saying."she was born to breed."
Maybe it will help for me to pass on how it was explained to me, as the father. Maternity leave is for recovering from the trauma of birth, and for taking care of the baby. Paternity leave is for helping the mother through the trauma, and of taking care of the baby. Unless it goes very smoothly, the mother had her body ripped apart and is also in a precarious mental state (postpartum depression, etc). Combine that with losing the child and you have someone who’s physically and mentally broken and possibly a danger to herself. I can’t even begin to imagine adding any bureaucratic difficulties to that. Ensure the bereaved mother takes her leave and also gets psychological counseling. The non-pregnant parent should also take leave to help the pregnant one recover physically and also to heal Themselves psychologically. Losing a child often destroys a relationship, so they should have space to heal and communicate.
I wish rules like this were simply baked in at the societal level. Having companies manage maternity leave creates misaligned incentives, which are so often the root of abuses.
That's not a controversial stance, it's negligent and ignorant. A mother is a mother in the fullest sense at least months prior to the baby being born, and doesn't stop because of a miscarriage.
She was given conflicting info on if her leave would be 6 or 8 weeks. Ended up being 8. Baby died an hour after birth, so leave was cut from the 8 weeks to 6 due to no longer having baby-mommy bonding. No mention of time off for mourning. The company has now amended their policy to 16 weeks for birth and adoption, so this case would have been covered.
Thanks. Lately Vice has been writing more and more outrage-bait titles/leads and burying the true story way below the fold. I guess it gets them the most shares.
> In an email reviewed by Motherboard, an HR representative told Jennifer, “your situation could never be planned for so would never be communicated,” and “all normal situations don’t fit your situation.”
Jennifer was told that because she couldn't plan for the tragedy, Informatica would renege its promises. Perhaps Informatica should plan a bit more about what happens when you have incoherent policies and treat human beings as disposable resources.
I still don't understand how this is going to result in anything positive for the company.
the whole point of an HR department is to stop anything developing that could cause productivity issues for a company.
Cutting the leave short for because someone's child dies shows a stunning lack of empathy or understanding of wider consequences for staff and company.
If I had found out that my company had pulled shit like that, then there would be hell to pay.
what kind of emotional vacuum do these people live in?
I'm speaking anecdotally but would 100% posit that this is true. One of the biggest things I'm learning as an adult in a capitalistic society is that empathy is an anti-pattern to how most medium-to-larger sized corporations operate.
Recently I've really come to fully accept that HR at most companies is not there for the employee (regardless of how they internally brand), vs. it being a compliance department and a risk barrier between general employees and the upper-crust. If something bad enough happens, they'll pin it on the HR employee and fire them vs. taking accountability for the company's actions.
No but in terms of risk management HR is taking a huge gamble that a bunch of people getting recruiter offers aren't going to go "you know what, screw this place" and leave.
I've noticed in myself and others that when you're stressed/inexperienced/otherwise not-at-ease at work, people start behaving defensively. That often turns into this sort of cold-hearted behaviour that people believe is considered professional, even though no competent manager would actually behave that way.
It's similar to middle management wearing nicer clothes in the typical signalling theory example.
My thought exactly. Honestly, I think Informatica should consider firing their entire HR department.
As you say, the entire point of HR is risk management. I hear loads of time on HN about how you can never trust HR because they are only there to protect the company, and while that's true, a lot of the time good HR people realize that the employees' needs and the long-term needs of company are aligned, so they should be working to improve your situation.
In this case, they asked a woman whose baby just died to come back to work over 2 weeks of leave. Did they honestly believe this inhumane act, which would basically guarantee them lots of deservedly shitty press, was worth it over a measly 2 weeks of leave?
Any decent HR person (and, honestly, any decent person in general) would have immediately realized this was an idiotic decision.
First, yes, perhaps I was using a bit of hyperbole.
But the point still stands that my response had really nothing to do with whether 8 weeks or 6 weeks or 16 weeks is "good enough". When someone has a baby, and that baby dies, it doesn't take much to realize you don't nickel and dime that employee over a couple of weeks of leave. You send flowers and a heartfelt letter.
The job of HR is specifically to lower employee related risk for a company, and is should be obvious that sending an email to the effect of "well, since your baby died, you'll be ready to come back to work sooner!" would in fact raise multiple risks for the company.
I had a baby that died. It was an excruciating experience and nobody around us knew what to do or say. From personal experience I can say it should be treated as a grave mental health issue and companies should be forced to provide a great deal of leave to both parents.
Whether leave is paid or unpaid, this should be treated in the same way as any disability or health related leave. IMHO it would be cheap for companies to simply buy infant life insurance for all employees and pay out $25,000 or so if this horrific thing comes to pass. That would help everyone at a reasonable cost since infant deaths and still births are so rare these days.
Those folks have been around forever, and I'm thankful for them. Not for my own sake, but because my mother had 3-4 miscarriages and one child who died of SIDS (this was in the early 70's). They most likely kept her sane.
As father to the best 8 month young man in the world I can't imagine even for a moment what that is like. I never ever comment on hacker news, I just wanted to say I'm deeply sorry anyone here may have lost their child.
On Oct 4 a friend (code name “Paul”) and I were at a viewing for our 25 year old friend who passed from falling while hiking. “Paul” and I both have boys born this year (5-6 months old). After attending the viewing, we both noted how sad it was to watch the father and mother in such a terrible situation. The worst for any parent, and somehow slightly more understandable now that we are parents ourselves.
That night his son passed away silently in his sleep - Not even 12 hours since we talked at the viewing about how surreal losing a child would be. Their baby simply stopped breathing. We’re all still in some level of shock.
Hug your little ones and appreciate the time you get with them. You never know when your life can go the other direction.
Please be good to "Paul", and do not expect him to "get over it" anytime soon. It doesn't work like that in my experience.
If he and family are ready for it, perhaps mentioning The Compassionate Friends -- along with its link I've posted elsewhere in this page -- might be gratefully received?
My local chapter is wonderful, and has kept my wife and I as sane as we are after losing our (only) son.
Thanks. I know my friends will never get over it. My wife had a sister that passed at 6 months old from a heart issue and my MiL said exactly that (“they’ll never forget its always with you every hour of every day”).
If you don’t mind my asking what part of the world are you in?
I had a coworker who went through this. My bosses were very gracious. She was on leave for some time, purely for mental health reasons. And I’m sure returning to work with her job intact was a major comfort. Our direct boss at the time would meet with her for lunch occasionally until she felt well enough to come back. I’m willing to bet it was the best way it could have gone for her in light of what she experienced.
She has since had a healthy baby and is usually beaming.
Maybe over the hump is a better way to describe it?
My own problems with seasonal / occasional depression have resembled something of a bell curve- not bad at first, then really bad, then not very bad. The threat of depression never really goes away, but the likelihood of having bad days generally dies down over time, especially if the gap from what you were missing (IE child, job, spouse, sibling, family, pets) gets filled by something else.
>From personal experience I can say it should be treated as a grave mental health issue and companies should be forced to provide a great deal of leave to both parents.
This shouldn't be limited to losing a newborn child. Losing a child at any stage of life is devastating.
I can't imagine what it would be like, and I'm terribly sorry that this happened to you.
BUT what's the limiting principle behind 'forcing' companies to provide 'a great deal of leave' for this?
I certainly agree that it's reasonable for an employer to offer bereavement time for the loss of a close family member, but why should this be made into law?
Because of cases like this article. Evidently this woman's employer does not have the insight to behave like decent human beings and needs to be forced.
Your argument can be turned on just about any labor law. "It may be reasonable for a company to do this, but why should they be forced?" The answer is without reasonable minimum standards, some people will exploit their employees.
That doesn’t speak to why the employer should do this rather than government.
When employers provide this social good they will inevitably call some of the shots; why should their voice have influence on this matter?
To me, this is similar to the public coming to the feeling that digital public spaces are worthy, but then the conversation turns to whether Facebook should be the one doing it...
The employer has to do it because they're the one who employs the person experiencing the loss. If this guarantee is written into law, then the company's voice will not have much influence on the matter. This is how labor law works.
Looking at it from a labor law perspective we can look at what other countries have done. Sweden for example do not provide any paid grieving period, but labor laws does give a right to take a leave of absence. Unions often extend this to paid leave, but also limits it to a set number of days, and often the amount seems to be a single day for the funeral.
What I have seen for actually grieving is that either people go back to work or they go to a doctor and get diagnosed with acute stress or depression because of the situation. I suspect that if the case in the article had occurred in Sweden then that is what actually would happen and the person would have got a few months to recover.
It is reasonable, but reasonable employers for the most part don't exist. That's why we have laws establishing a minimum wage, nondiscrimination, paying out PTO in California, and the FMLA act which gives us parental leave in the first place.
Because hypothetical employers who are actually benevolent are forced to compete with those who aren't, absent regulation? AKA a "race to the bottom".
When corporations send me stuff in writing every day saying that they can only do the minimum mandated by law in respect to any ethical matter, I have to wonder whose opinion it really represents to say that minimum standards aren't necessary.
This is the essence of competition. Increasing demands on employers pushes people who want to/would be willing to work for less completely out of the market.
People have to make decisions based on the most likely scenarios. Big companies can take advantage of the unlikely scenarios, for employees or for customers, because they average across large numbers of people. This is like a memory leak that defeats competition; it's not a flaw in the rationality of either party, but it is a real problem absent good regulation.
IMHO it would be cheap for companies to simply buy infant life insurance for all employees
Individuals can buy this sort of life insurance for themselves without the help of their employers. Given that it is, as you say, "cheap" there isn't an economic burden either.
Why would we want employers intruding into yet another aspect of individual's lives? We're all well aware of the problems that come from having employers responsible for health insurance.
Who the hell plans for their baby to die? You don't even consider the possibility, too much cognitive dissonance. And after all, how common is it these days? And then when it happens to you, so many other people have a similar story. Turns out it happens all the time, it's just that nobody talks about it.
Also, consider for a moment how you'd feel being given a huge payout for a lost child. The money can't fix anything, but it's kind of nice to have money, and then you start feeling guilty about that, and it's a whole quagmire of badness.
The emotional complexities of "receiving a huge payout for the lost child" make me even more sure that employers shouldn't be getting involved in this. It's a deeply personal decision that people can have wildly differing views on. The last thing we want is businesses making these sorts of decisions for their employees.
Businesses aren't your parents. They shouldn't be involved in stuff this personal.
I agree that the involvement of your employer should end at "take as much time as you need." I was just pointing out that "people should just self-insure" is an equally bad stance for multiple reasons.
> IMHO it would be cheap for companies to simply buy infant life insurance for all employees and pay out $25,000 or so if this horrific thing comes to pass.
There's a serious moral hazard problem with providing automatic life insurance on infants to large numbers of people.
Almost everyone will be unwilling to kill their own infant to collect $25,000 from mandatory employer-sponsored life insurance, but "almost everyone" does not cover everyone who works for a company that employs more than 25 people.
She got six weeks instead of eight. How dare they. She could've applied for more days based on her psychological state.
Also how dare they not pay her commissions earned by her team while she was away.
I think the tone is all wrong here. Economically, it makes sense to "discriminate" against pregnant women, so the discussion should be more "Here's why you shouldn't do it" and less "How dare you do it!".
I think the tone is all wrong here. Economically, it makes sense to "discriminate" against pregnant women, so the discussion should be more "Here's why you shouldn't do it" and less "How dare you do it!".
In most circumstances I agree with this viewpoint, but what happened in this case is something that less-policed societies would see business owners killed for.
The "Here's why you shouldn't do it" is both morally and economically obvious, and any corporation or C-level who can't see that is completely without morals and common sense, along with basic human emotion, seemingly.
"How dare you be so inhumane to your employees that most European countries would see you fined or imprisoned, and that every religion would see you in the worst possible afterlife!"
The press you'd receive alone is reason enough, and anyone with any intelligence whatsoever would see that this would be more broadly controversial than more or less any other possible evil action.
Don't much care your gender, but I think that viewpoint is a bit deranged, with all due respect.
There are things you don't do, whether it makes fiscal sense or not. You think very carefully about accepting it as a possibility, because doing so drops the standard for everyone else around you.
If for some reason you do, you especially don't do it unilaterally without getting buy-in from the other party out of respect. It's like people have completely lost any sense of civility around actually finding out what people are okay with.
I vehemently disagree with the economic argument being given primacy over some level of social decency and civil decorum.
It's one of those "honor" things. We do it not because it's the easiest, but because it's what makes us human. Shouldering some extra burden when someone else is suffering from a much greater one foisted through no fault of their own is just how it should work.
Of course no one in business likes that type of sentiment because it doesn't fit on a balance sheet.
> Shouldering some extra burden when someone else is suffering from a much greater one foisted through no fault of their own is just how it should work.
If I am voluntarily bearing the burden I would like bear it for someone who is suffering the most in the world. Bearing it for someone who happened to apply for job at the same company doesn't make any sense. If you have food on your plate and live in a first world country on a 6 week paid bereavment leave then you aren't even in the vicinity of suffering, like not even close.
Only framing I can think of is that I would like to have privileges applied to me if same thing happens to me. This is much more selfish and sensible way to look at it.
> Economically, it makes sense to "discriminate" against pregnant women.
I've heard this repeated a lot but I don't get it (I'm an employer). I mean I can't think of many things that would hurt team morale and hiring reputation more than treating a young female employee like shit just because she got pregnant (let alone went through something as horrific as losing a child). What kind of short-sighted psychopath boss would look at this any other way?
I mean, even when looking at it with dry unemotional money glasses, high employee turn-over is a much more costly than the occasional paid pregnancy leave.
I just don't get it.
But yeah I guess that's what your point is :-) it just makes no sense to discriminate against any of this stuff.
>I mean I can't think of many things that would hurt team morale and hiring reputation more than treating a young female employee like shit just because she got pregnant
Anecdote time based on my experience in SV and tech, and second-hand anecdotes from friends in NYC finance:
Curiousgal's viewpoint isn't uncommon. The harshest judgment in these situations comes from other women. Men are generally more sympathetic, and if they're not, they're too scared to say anything.
Women in competitive & high-paying fields like tech and finance can be brutal, especially if they feel like holding off on having children was a sacrifice that they had to make in order to establish themselves in their career.
I would not be surprised if this decision came all the way down from a female manager, with men lower on the chain voicing opposition and being overruled.
> I would not be surprised if this decision came all the way down from a female manager, with men lower on the chain voicing opposition and being overruled.
You’re lucky you didn’t bet him, because you’d have lost. I’d have bet against you as well.
The SVP and Chief Human Resources Officer at Informatica when this incident happened was Maureen Brennan. She’s also a former VP and BoD Trustee of the Women's Health and Counseling Center in New Jersey, which focuses on reproductive healthcare services.
Well, she owned the policy in question, and there’s no way that the head of HR didn’t get wind of an escalation like this. I don’t know about the bit regarding a man below her getting their decision overturned, but ultimately she would have approved it. If a policy interpretation decision was “mistakenly” made before it got to her, she would have been able to overturn it, and evidently that never happened.
It is obviously speculation since I don't work there or know anyone who does, but it is based on what I've personally seen and heard. It's kind of funny that you find it so hard to believe, though. I don't expect to get an actual answer from you in regards to why that is, but I'd still like to ask you why you think it's unlikely.
This was a decision made by an HR manager. If you are not familiar with the gender imbalance for HR in the United States, it is overwhelmingly women (both in and out of tech).
You can form a rough and incomplete org chart by glancing through LinkedIn, if you want some actual data that will assist you in forming an educated guess in regards to who was potentially involved with this decision.
If we are assuming that all of the people involved were acting rationally and in their best interests (and there is no reason not to), then I think it is naive to think that this did not make it all the way to the CHRO.
You’ve been lucky in your career. I have, especially early in my career before I could afford to be choosy, encountered multiple managers, business owners and others who are basically cold and calculating about exploiting others. They see maternity through the lens of lost productivity and that’s it. They consider a woman’s age and relationship status and consider not hiring or promoting because pregnancy might get in the way.
When you’re a contractor you see these true colors come out more often. Clients who are more than happy to manipulate a situation to avoid paying you. Ethical lapses that they can rationalize to themselves as good business.
I think someone's simply looking at the first-order consequences and calling the analysis done, rather than taking into account the sort of company that enacting the policy will result in.
> Economically, it makes sense to "discriminate" against pregnant women, so the discussion should be more "Here's why you shouldn't do it" and less "How dare you do it!".
Not sure what century you're living in but here in the 21st the "how dare you" branch is the hair-trigger one. So simple logic dictates to short circuit on "how dare you" and only test "here's why" in the unlikely chance that the first test fails.
Please give me the economic argument for putting the cold branch test in the hot path.
Just in case there are other bereaved parents (of whom I am one) reading this. I want you to know about an organization called The Compassionate Friends, composed solely of family members of a deceased child.
A sales engineer is a type of engineer (as the term is used in US English; in some countries engineer is a protected term and programmers are rarely eligible for it).
Sales Engineer typically means Pre-Sales. It's a supporting sales position, part of the sales organisation. I think the title is unnecessarily misleading.
People who drive trains are also a type of engineer. I kind of get where the person you're responding to is coming from. It's not worth calling out when the article is aimed at the general population, which doesn't care about the distinction between a sales engineer and a software engineer. It would just be confusing without an explanation, and that explanation would unnecessarily bloat the story.
Wow, just wow. Whoever made that decision is somebody who is truly worthy of the title "douchebag". How can any human being have so little regard for another? That's just disgusting.
There's a right way to handle a situation like this, and it goes something like:
-----------
Dear $EMPLOYEE:
We are very sorry to hear about your loss. All of us are wishing you the best in this time of need, and we are here to support you any way we can.
It's a small measure under the circumstances, but we just wanted to let you know that we've extended your leave to 12 weeks. If you need more time, just let us know. Rest assured, your job will be waiting for you when you return, and we'll all be thrilled to see you when you're ready.
We've also send you a special one-time bonus of $10,000, to help with any additional expenses that result from this situation. This will be deposited as part of your next paycheck.
If there's anything else we can do for you, just let us know.
While I would love if the world could work like this, the reason HR and their arcane rules exist in the first place...is because people tend to take advantage of things.
And you might think, hey but 99% of people are decent and would not take advantage of the company. That's probably true! But there's always the 1% that ruins it for everybody else (just like the outlier sociopath HR person in this article).
If you say stuff like, "take as much time as you need," 99% of employees would not abuse this situation. But there's always the 1%...and if it's a big company, that 1% could be 1,000 people.
The rate of stillbirth is 1 in 100 births. So it's not exactly uncommon.
So you can see how a company might end up paying a salary to 3 people who haven't showed up to work in over 2 years because you were just trying to be a decent human.
You might think that's an insane scenario that would never happen. You'd be surprised. Crazy things like that are the reason HR policies exist in the first place.
So let's say the company is 100,000 people, and 1% of births are still births, and 1% of employees will take the piss. And let's say 5% of employees have a baby in any given year (is this realistic? I honestly don't know, it seems high). Then on average you'll have one employee every two years take advantage of the situation (keeping in mind, the person "taking advantage" has also endured the death of a baby). I think a company the size of Microsoft or Google can absorb the piss-taking of one grieving employee every two years, to be honest.
I had to do a double take there, I read it as months first time. How can a woman give birth and be back at work in eight weeks? Six weeks seems impossible baby or not, the recovery time for pregnancy and birth can be many months.
If I were a woman living in a society like that I think I’d either not have children or not work at all.
Sometimes a family member such as a grandparent, sometimes a company who the parents of the child pay to look after the child. Businesses which provide this service are called "daycare" in the US.
Yes? Its routine in traditional societies for non-parents to raise children. The idea of "intensive mothering," where mom is stuck taking care of the baby alone for months or years, is a blip in the history of time. (In Europe, lengthy maternity leaves are also financially costly for mothers. While European countries generally offer "paid" leave, the salary caps are pretty low. France offers up to $650 per week. The median woman working full-time in America makes $800 per week.)
"Under the current system, France offers employed mothers 16 weeks’ paid congé maternité (three to six before the expected date of birth and 10 to 13 after). The total allowance increases to 34 weeks for twins and 46 for triplets.
Women receive 26 weeks, instead of 16, from their third child. They can choose to return to work sooner, but must take a minimum of eight weeks, including six after the birth, to receive pay.
The leave is paid at 100 per cent of salary, capped at €540 net per week. This is the equivalent of a €2,885 gross monthly salary."
2855 Euro gross is fairly normal in France for the bulk of the people who would need this assistance. The $650 is net take home, not gross. You also have to take into account that in France lots of things that are very costly in the USA are free and so you can't directly compare the compensation for paid maternity leave with the income of the median woman in America, that's apples and oranges. You should compare it with either the median pay in France or with the average paid leave compensation in the USA.
Finally, there is the duration of the leave to take into account 16 weeks is going on three months, which compared to the 6 weeks (or less) of maternity leave in the United States is pretty generous.
Is it costly for mothers? Well, that depends on the income of the mother before the maternity leave. But France has figure out - rightly - that if you earn lots of money that you need this assistance likely a lot less than if you do not. And so there is a cap.
Um, depending, either nuclear family, extended family, friends, or other caretakers. Generally involves either pumping or using formula to feed the baby.
This is one of the many reasons why multigenerational households can be a benefit to the individuals within.
We've got three kids in the US, they all started daycare when they were 6-8 weeks old so we could return to work. I don't think there was serious physical recovery still happening then (they were uncomplicated births), but the sleep deprivation is very rough.
I'm in the US and a coworker came to work the next day after giving birth. There is no time allotted for maternity leave and she had already used her vacation time at the beginning of the year before she was pregnant. I was at a charity event with the CEO and he was laughing about it saying."she was born to breed."
Women everywhere agree with you. Capitalism relies on women to create, raise and see to the education of new consumers and workers with little to no help. They are opting out. People everywhere see that the childless have a higher standard of living than parents. In many places there are more people 65+ than those under 18, and that will soon enough be common in most places. The example cited in the article is just a particularly outrageous sample of a much larger problem.
What is the answer? I don't know. As I recently read "Most people can more easily imagine the end of the world than a change in capitalism."
The issue is simply, how do we incentivize people to have more kids? Some countries have figured out...you can use this thing called "government" to create the incentives to solve the problem. Mandatory leave for both new mothers and fathers, massive tax benefits, subsidized childcare, etc.
Countries who have done this, while still being market-based economies (capitalist), have been successful in increasing their birth rate to sustainable levels! Maybe we should try it?
Are you sure there are countries that have figured it out? All I have read is that no country has successfully yet incentivized birth rates above 2.1 after dropping below.
It does seem like it's a "bad way" to treat someone, but unless we hear all the information from all parties, I don't think we should sharpen our pitchforks.
What I can get from this is an awareness of the issues women face, and to sensitive to these topics if I'm ever in a position to influence policy about them, or to assist someone in that situation.
Also, this woman was a commissioned sales representative. I have little knowledge how these people generally are compensated, but I do know it's different from how other employees get paid and rewarded. They usually have employment contracts and terms that are different from other staff.
>> “Eight weeks of paid leave includes up to two weeks prior to the birth and assumes a normal vaginal delivery,” an HR representative said write to Jennifer
I bet if most companies simply got rid of the HR departments altogether, not only would inhumane and repulsive policies like the above not exist, I bet most employees would be happier and more productive.
I've had good and bad experiences with HR. If you have good HR and a bad manager, you can rely on HR in times of family crisis (and if the manager punishes you, you'll probably have support to relocate within the company; rolling the dice but at least you've still got HR). If you have bad HR and a good manager, you rely on the manager. If both are bad, it's probably best to find new employment.
HR - in service of protecting the companies interests - just as often prevent managers from discriminating.
I think a better solution is to have stronger laws that favor workers. HR will enforce them because they don’t want their company in legal trouble, and employees gain the benefit the laws provide. Everyone wins, more or less.
Some of the worst people I ever had the misfortune to interact with were in HR, and I'm 100% sure it wasn't just because their were the executors of company policy. There were great ones too of course, but I feel it attracts a certain personality type.
> Since Elizabeth Warren shared in a campaign video on October 9 that after becoming pregnant in 1971, she was pushed out of a teaching position—many women have spoken out on social media saying they’ve been denied promotions, fired, and retaliated against for their pregnancies.
I’m sure most of those stories are true. Elizabeth Warren’s, however, was a lie.[1]
It certainly is easy enough to generate a reason acceptable to external monitors to get rid of a person. I have done this myself, and would do it again. In fact I don't think I've ever worked anywhere over the last 40 years where this is not the default approach. CYA is a thing, and always will be.
Both of those articles seem to extremely clearly support the idea that Warren was not fired or refused a job extension as a result of pregnancy.
We could speculate about unrecorded behavior. What proof do we have? Warren says one thing and written records literally contradict it. If Warren’s version is to be believed, it seems obvious it would require significant evidence to contradict the meeting minutes and her own earlier quotes about graduate courses.
My understanding is it was very common for teachers to be fired/contracts not renewed as soon as they announced they were pregnant. Not sure why you think a link to a site like freebeacon backs you up.
I understand that people might not like her policies, but this stuff is clearly targeted swift boating. It doesn’t add to to the discussion.
If what it says in the link is true, records say her contract was renewed and she says it was not. Then she left a few months later.
It's perfectly plausible that she could have been "constructively discharged" on account of her pregnancy, which morally would amount to the same thing.
But I think based on what is written, either that article or Warren has to be lying about specifics.
As a Democratic primary voter, I'm indifferent to this story, and will probably go with Warren if everyone else does, but if I cared, obviously I would check on the source, no matter how disreputable the publication.
Edit:
I reread it a few times and now I think it's just BS framing by the Free Beacon. She had her contract renewed, but she resigned at the end of the school year, I'd assume before the new contract took effect. Probably was told she had to. To assume her story is perfectly consistent, you just have to assume they noticed she was pregnant in those couple of months.
Imagine if Donald Trump recently started making some new claim about an event that happened decades ago. Imagine CNN dug up the only historical records that exist, and they directly contradicted that claim.
Apples and oranges. If Trump were a woman, claiming that they experienced pregnancy discrimination in the past, and the official record contradicted that ... then yes, I would believe Trump.
Pregnancy discrimination, and discrimination against women in particular, has been so insidious and so pervasive for so many years, that the standard for proof has changed accordingly.
Apples and oranges, covered by a veneer of intellectualism and a subtle accusation of partisan bias. It’s pretty transparent trolling to be honest.
This not a theoretical argument. Trump regularly makes stuff up on the fly when there are multiple records proving the opposite. The White House has to make up 'alternate facts' on a pretty much daily basis to keep up.
The results are always the same: his die-hard supports believe him, and reality is altered; his opponents point it out and wonder how anyone can think he's not maniacal; and the Republican party sighs and repeats the mantra "you dance with the one that brought you".
If he claimed something happened to him that was known to be widely happening to people like him at the time, something that was the norm in business and was often recorded the way it was recorded in his case to give the people doing it deniability, then yes, I’d believe it.
Of course it’s difficult to give a general answer, and it’d depend on the details of the case.
Perhaps you have a specific example of where Trump was at the tail-end of systematic discrimination in the beginning of his career?
It seems a bit insane to me that pregnancy leave is something we Americans mostly leave to the discretion of employers. If we as a society care about it, we should back it up with public dollars and public policy.
It would require taxation and there’s a segment of the population and most corporations who would fight that tooth and nail even if it only cost a small amount in aggregate.
Wow, you appear misinformed. Unemployment benefits in the US vary by state, in some states they last only three months. The amount you receive is based on the income you had before receiving it, so it could be more or less than the UK standard payments.
That aside, unemployment payments are funded as a completely separate system to every other kind of welfare in the US and so they demonstrate nothing at all about how other payments could be afforded.
Right, but neither of those benefits exist in a vacuum.
American health insurance is usually tied to your job. If you lose your job, you can continue it, temporarily, through a provision called COBRA, but it is often outrageously expensive.
In the UK, I believe you’re able to access the NHS regardless of your employment status (right?). Equivalent insurance would cost you hundreds of dollars a month in the US, if not more, and would have to be paid from your benefits. An apples-to-apples comparison between the two system ought to include that fact.
Is this not a straightforward result of making what would normally be family or personal leave contingent upon a specific purpose, rather than just generally reforming labor laws for everyone? You can have a significant life-changing death of anyone in your family.
Name and shame everyone in the chain of command here so an indelible record of their actions is left on the internet. Really the only acceptable solution.
I think this is a particularly bad way of dealing with problems. We have trials, laws and regulations for a reason; causing permanent effects on people's lives based on a single article is wrong in my opinion.
I'm saying this while also thinking that what the company did (according to the article) is despicable and insensitive.
Should have just legally murdered it in the womb or kept her legs closed. If women want to join the work force they need to start behaving more responsibly.
I think the problem is that healthcare related stuff shouldn’t even be on management’s plate. Managers and executives are usually not qualified to decide what is good healthcare, but are forced to make decisions anyhow. Healthcare should be managed at the societal level.
We're in an odd state of paralysis as a society. On the one hand, we acknowledge that there are birth rate / population-related issues coming rapidly down the pipeline at us, problems we acknowledge can only be solved by either supporting existing citizens/families in having more children or mass migration.
Through exhaustion with unaccountable corruption and reckless, ineffective public spending by all parties on the political spectrum, our societies won't support any social move (more taxes, better laws) in the name of the former, whilst being by-and-large in opposition of the latter.
Neither of the above will help in themselves though without a drastic change in the pressures requiring dual income families for mere survival, convergence in the metropolis for work, stagnant income growth coupled with soaring costs, especially around child rearing and education, and the modern narrative toward women (largely by other women) that they're nothing unless they're building a meaningful career for themselves.
While the rest of the Western World is by no means perfect and is still suffering declining birth rates due to some of the factors listed above, America's approach and policies toward social well-being - financial and moral support for maternity leave, general time off work and compassion for the sick - is utterly reprehensible. It is the most prosperous, wealthy nation on the planet and seems to be content to resign itself to a society benefiting a very small handful of people at a massive social, financial, economical and physical cost to everyone else.
A mere 8 weeks leave for going through pregnancy and bringing a child - that which we depend on for future taxes, productivity, volunteer work, philanthropy, innovation and social policy - into the world and then 2 weeks being cut in the name of money because that child died? How can anyone who supports or justifies this look at themselves in the mirror in the morning?
If you deem your country / nation / peoples to be important and worthwhile, its future to be crucial and investment in that future to be a necessity but support these policies then you're either a monster or an utter moron.
The people of certain states have thought it worthwhile to provide 18+ weeks to mothers and 12 weeks to fathers. The west coast WA/OR/CA and northeast from MA to NJ and DC are a little bit more civilized.
don't we also have far more pressing carbon emissions issues though ? Isn't population decline such a bad thing. Do we really need billions and billions of people because its 'good for the economy'
Population decline in and of itself is not a bad thing. The societies and structures we've created, such as public pensions, do rely on continual growth though and without it will face a crisis.
The United States is infamous among world nations for lack of mandatory paid maternity leave. Even the unpaid leave is incredibly short: Only 12 weeks.
This, while the total _paid_ leave available to mothers among OECD nations is ~54 weeks, including 18 weeks average paid maternity leave plus another long period of paid parental leave following it:
That 12 weeks of unpaid leave is only for companies who employ more than 50 people, too. I expect most Americans work for companies smaller than that (and so don't get the leave) but I haven't checked.
"Since 2014...34.3 percent worked at small companies."
And this is for "small" defined as <= 100. The percentage will be even smaller for <= 50.
It's also important to note that it's wrong to say that employees of small businesses "don't get the leave." Many small businesses will ofter leave to their employees without a federal mandate.
Paternity leaves are just as bad to the market as any kind of social programs that use government money. Women have to be paid less to cover up the risks,then it turns into a social problem, with screaming hysterical feminists being enabled to promote things that corrupt social structures, etc.
228 comments
[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 232 ms ] threadI think the old adage applies here, "make sure everything is in writing". She was promised a promotion, but she did not sign a contract and nothing was set in stone.
I learned to put everything in writing the hard way. If something is in writing, even if it is an email, then it is hard for the company to go back on their words. Having an actual contract is better, but having just about anything written down is better than just about anything verbal.
I hope Jennifer recovers, and I hope that the company she has transferred to treats her better.
Some things you want to get in writing, other things you don't want to plan for unless it's in writing.
Wtf? How can that possibly be a thing?
I don't know the specifics of this case, but maternity leave is absolutely something that has been abused. My spouse worked with a woman who got hired while she was pregnant, had the baby and took advantage of the company's extremely generous paid maternity leave, and then came back in and quit on her first day back. From the company's standpoint, this hire was simply a cash giveaway and a huge loss.
The key word is here "already earned". Denying that doesn't make any sense, any which way we look at it.
Still, punish the 95% (or whatever very high number) for the shitty behavior of other 5% of people? I understand it is business and companies need to protect their profits, but this is ridiculous.
Yeah, I agree. Just pointing out that this stuff rarely comes from mustache-twirling villains and more often is just a misguided attempt to solve some other related problem. Cutting off commission that has already been earned sounds pretty bad.
Yes, they literally do (or hire consultants to do it).
I went to school with lots of people who ended up in management consulting. One in particular worked at Deloitte and specialized in "human capital".
Most of their projects were to figure out how an organization could drastically reduce pension/retirement benefits for existing workers legally, while also offering much worse plans for new hires that looked good on paper.
They were paid around $1,800/day/consultant for all of these cost-cutting projects.
(This is not at all an uncommon story in the enterprise consulting world, by the way.)
What there was to take maybe was a bereavement leave.
Maternity: the period during pregnancy and shortly after childbirth
She birthed a child. This cuts a little close to denying that.
it took me 5-6 weeks after giving birth to be able to drive again for short distances. won’t even go into the other indignities and needs in that period.
Not that I have either, but having seen it a few times I don't think I'd recover quickly even without the bereavement. The blood being mopped up - literally with a mop - after my wife's episiotomy was like something from a horror movie.
I don't think they let you drive for 6 weeks after a caesarian in the UK.
I wish rules like this were simply baked in at the societal level. Having companies manage maternity leave creates misaligned incentives, which are so often the root of abuses.
Jennifer was told that because she couldn't plan for the tragedy, Informatica would renege its promises. Perhaps Informatica should plan a bit more about what happens when you have incoherent policies and treat human beings as disposable resources.
edit: updated for clarity
the whole point of an HR department is to stop anything developing that could cause productivity issues for a company.
Cutting the leave short for because someone's child dies shows a stunning lack of empathy or understanding of wider consequences for staff and company.
If I had found out that my company had pulled shit like that, then there would be hell to pay.
what kind of emotional vacuum do these people live in?
Recently I've really come to fully accept that HR at most companies is not there for the employee (regardless of how they internally brand), vs. it being a compliance department and a risk barrier between general employees and the upper-crust. If something bad enough happens, they'll pin it on the HR employee and fire them vs. taking accountability for the company's actions.
HR is not your friend.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/23743735176992... is a good start if you wanna learn more.
I've noticed in myself and others that when you're stressed/inexperienced/otherwise not-at-ease at work, people start behaving defensively. That often turns into this sort of cold-hearted behaviour that people believe is considered professional, even though no competent manager would actually behave that way.
It's similar to middle management wearing nicer clothes in the typical signalling theory example.
As you say, the entire point of HR is risk management. I hear loads of time on HN about how you can never trust HR because they are only there to protect the company, and while that's true, a lot of the time good HR people realize that the employees' needs and the long-term needs of company are aligned, so they should be working to improve your situation.
In this case, they asked a woman whose baby just died to come back to work over 2 weeks of leave. Did they honestly believe this inhumane act, which would basically guarantee them lots of deservedly shitty press, was worth it over a measly 2 weeks of leave?
Any decent HR person (and, honestly, any decent person in general) would have immediately realized this was an idiotic decision.
Why? They changed the policy over a year ago to 16 weeks of paid leave, and included pregnancy recovery in that. Is that not good enough?
But the point still stands that my response had really nothing to do with whether 8 weeks or 6 weeks or 16 weeks is "good enough". When someone has a baby, and that baby dies, it doesn't take much to realize you don't nickel and dime that employee over a couple of weeks of leave. You send flowers and a heartfelt letter.
The job of HR is specifically to lower employee related risk for a company, and is should be obvious that sending an email to the effect of "well, since your baby died, you'll be ready to come back to work sooner!" would in fact raise multiple risks for the company.
Whether leave is paid or unpaid, this should be treated in the same way as any disability or health related leave. IMHO it would be cheap for companies to simply buy infant life insurance for all employees and pay out $25,000 or so if this horrific thing comes to pass. That would help everyone at a reasonable cost since infant deaths and still births are so rare these days.
May peace be unto you.
(Ping me if you want info about an organization called "The Compassionate Friends" specifically for bereaved parents.)
That night his son passed away silently in his sleep - Not even 12 hours since we talked at the viewing about how surreal losing a child would be. Their baby simply stopped breathing. We’re all still in some level of shock.
Hug your little ones and appreciate the time you get with them. You never know when your life can go the other direction.
Please be good to "Paul", and do not expect him to "get over it" anytime soon. It doesn't work like that in my experience.
If he and family are ready for it, perhaps mentioning The Compassionate Friends -- along with its link I've posted elsewhere in this page -- might be gratefully received?
My local chapter is wonderful, and has kept my wife and I as sane as we are after losing our (only) son.
May peace be unto "Paul".
If you don’t mind my asking what part of the world are you in?
She has since had a healthy baby and is usually beaming.
But, from personal experience, I would not assume that she is anything like "over" losing the other child.
My own problems with seasonal / occasional depression have resembled something of a bell curve- not bad at first, then really bad, then not very bad. The threat of depression never really goes away, but the likelihood of having bad days generally dies down over time, especially if the gap from what you were missing (IE child, job, spouse, sibling, family, pets) gets filled by something else.
This shouldn't be limited to losing a newborn child. Losing a child at any stage of life is devastating.
BUT what's the limiting principle behind 'forcing' companies to provide 'a great deal of leave' for this?
I certainly agree that it's reasonable for an employer to offer bereavement time for the loss of a close family member, but why should this be made into law?
Your argument can be turned on just about any labor law. "It may be reasonable for a company to do this, but why should they be forced?" The answer is without reasonable minimum standards, some people will exploit their employees.
When employers provide this social good they will inevitably call some of the shots; why should their voice have influence on this matter?
To me, this is similar to the public coming to the feeling that digital public spaces are worthy, but then the conversation turns to whether Facebook should be the one doing it...
What I have seen for actually grieving is that either people go back to work or they go to a doctor and get diagnosed with acute stress or depression because of the situation. I suspect that if the case in the article had occurred in Sweden then that is what actually would happen and the person would have got a few months to recover.
My preference would be for law makers started with laws that forced companies to give theirs workers a fair days pay for a fair days work.
Because hypothetical employers who are actually benevolent are forced to compete with those who aren't, absent regulation? AKA a "race to the bottom".
When corporations send me stuff in writing every day saying that they can only do the minimum mandated by law in respect to any ethical matter, I have to wonder whose opinion it really represents to say that minimum standards aren't necessary.
Individuals can buy this sort of life insurance for themselves without the help of their employers. Given that it is, as you say, "cheap" there isn't an economic burden either.
Why would we want employers intruding into yet another aspect of individual's lives? We're all well aware of the problems that come from having employers responsible for health insurance.
Also, consider for a moment how you'd feel being given a huge payout for a lost child. The money can't fix anything, but it's kind of nice to have money, and then you start feeling guilty about that, and it's a whole quagmire of badness.
Businesses aren't your parents. They shouldn't be involved in stuff this personal.
There's a serious moral hazard problem with providing automatic life insurance on infants to large numbers of people.
Almost everyone will be unwilling to kill their own infant to collect $25,000 from mandatory employer-sponsored life insurance, but "almost everyone" does not cover everyone who works for a company that employs more than 25 people.
No. The society should help you out, the company shouldn't be forced to do that.
Also how dare they not pay her commissions earned by her team while she was away.
I think the tone is all wrong here. Economically, it makes sense to "discriminate" against pregnant women, so the discussion should be more "Here's why you shouldn't do it" and less "How dare you do it!".
Just my $0.02 as a woman.
In most circumstances I agree with this viewpoint, but what happened in this case is something that less-policed societies would see business owners killed for.
The "Here's why you shouldn't do it" is both morally and economically obvious, and any corporation or C-level who can't see that is completely without morals and common sense, along with basic human emotion, seemingly.
"How dare you be so inhumane to your employees that most European countries would see you fined or imprisoned, and that every religion would see you in the worst possible afterlife!"
The press you'd receive alone is reason enough, and anyone with any intelligence whatsoever would see that this would be more broadly controversial than more or less any other possible evil action.
There are things you don't do, whether it makes fiscal sense or not. You think very carefully about accepting it as a possibility, because doing so drops the standard for everyone else around you.
If for some reason you do, you especially don't do it unilaterally without getting buy-in from the other party out of respect. It's like people have completely lost any sense of civility around actually finding out what people are okay with.
I vehemently disagree with the economic argument being given primacy over some level of social decency and civil decorum.
It's one of those "honor" things. We do it not because it's the easiest, but because it's what makes us human. Shouldering some extra burden when someone else is suffering from a much greater one foisted through no fault of their own is just how it should work.
Of course no one in business likes that type of sentiment because it doesn't fit on a balance sheet.
If I am voluntarily bearing the burden I would like bear it for someone who is suffering the most in the world. Bearing it for someone who happened to apply for job at the same company doesn't make any sense. If you have food on your plate and live in a first world country on a 6 week paid bereavment leave then you aren't even in the vicinity of suffering, like not even close.
Only framing I can think of is that I would like to have privileges applied to me if same thing happens to me. This is much more selfish and sensible way to look at it.
I've heard this repeated a lot but I don't get it (I'm an employer). I mean I can't think of many things that would hurt team morale and hiring reputation more than treating a young female employee like shit just because she got pregnant (let alone went through something as horrific as losing a child). What kind of short-sighted psychopath boss would look at this any other way?
I mean, even when looking at it with dry unemotional money glasses, high employee turn-over is a much more costly than the occasional paid pregnancy leave.
I just don't get it.
But yeah I guess that's what your point is :-) it just makes no sense to discriminate against any of this stuff.
Anecdote time based on my experience in SV and tech, and second-hand anecdotes from friends in NYC finance:
Curiousgal's viewpoint isn't uncommon. The harshest judgment in these situations comes from other women. Men are generally more sympathetic, and if they're not, they're too scared to say anything.
Women in competitive & high-paying fields like tech and finance can be brutal, especially if they feel like holding off on having children was a sacrifice that they had to make in order to establish themselves in their career.
I would not be surprised if this decision came all the way down from a female manager, with men lower on the chain voicing opposition and being overruled.
That's very speculative and likely not true.
The SVP and Chief Human Resources Officer at Informatica when this incident happened was Maureen Brennan. She’s also a former VP and BoD Trustee of the Women's Health and Counseling Center in New Jersey, which focuses on reproductive healthcare services.
It all looks highly speculative to me.
But yes, of course it’s speculation :)
It is obviously speculation since I don't work there or know anyone who does, but it is based on what I've personally seen and heard. It's kind of funny that you find it so hard to believe, though. I don't expect to get an actual answer from you in regards to why that is, but I'd still like to ask you why you think it's unlikely.
This was a decision made by an HR manager. If you are not familiar with the gender imbalance for HR in the United States, it is overwhelmingly women (both in and out of tech).
You can form a rough and incomplete org chart by glancing through LinkedIn, if you want some actual data that will assist you in forming an educated guess in regards to who was potentially involved with this decision.
If we are assuming that all of the people involved were acting rationally and in their best interests (and there is no reason not to), then I think it is naive to think that this did not make it all the way to the CHRO.
When you’re a contractor you see these true colors come out more often. Clients who are more than happy to manipulate a situation to avoid paying you. Ethical lapses that they can rationalize to themselves as good business.
I think someone's simply looking at the first-order consequences and calling the analysis done, rather than taking into account the sort of company that enacting the policy will result in.
Well, she _did_ work in sales...
Not sure what century you're living in but here in the 21st the "how dare you" branch is the hair-trigger one. So simple logic dictates to short circuit on "how dare you" and only test "here's why" in the unlikely chance that the first test fails.
Please give me the economic argument for putting the cold branch test in the hot path.
This is particularly inflammatory. Just because women hold 5% of leadership positions, it doesn’t mean discrimination is the cause (or sole cause).
https://www.compassionatefriends.org/
"You need not walk alone."
"We are desperately sorry for the reason you are here, but we are glad you found us."
(Edit: typo.)
There's a right way to handle a situation like this, and it goes something like:
-----------
Dear $EMPLOYEE:
We are very sorry to hear about your loss. All of us are wishing you the best in this time of need, and we are here to support you any way we can.
It's a small measure under the circumstances, but we just wanted to let you know that we've extended your leave to 12 weeks. If you need more time, just let us know. Rest assured, your job will be waiting for you when you return, and we'll all be thrilled to see you when you're ready.
We've also send you a special one-time bonus of $10,000, to help with any additional expenses that result from this situation. This will be deposited as part of your next paycheck.
If there's anything else we can do for you, just let us know.
$CEO_NAME
And you might think, hey but 99% of people are decent and would not take advantage of the company. That's probably true! But there's always the 1% that ruins it for everybody else (just like the outlier sociopath HR person in this article).
If you say stuff like, "take as much time as you need," 99% of employees would not abuse this situation. But there's always the 1%...and if it's a big company, that 1% could be 1,000 people.
The rate of stillbirth is 1 in 100 births. So it's not exactly uncommon.
So you can see how a company might end up paying a salary to 3 people who haven't showed up to work in over 2 years because you were just trying to be a decent human.
You might think that's an insane scenario that would never happen. You'd be surprised. Crazy things like that are the reason HR policies exist in the first place.
I had to do a double take there, I read it as months first time. How can a woman give birth and be back at work in eight weeks? Six weeks seems impossible baby or not, the recovery time for pregnancy and birth can be many months.
If I were a woman living in a society like that I think I’d either not have children or not work at all.
Women receive 26 weeks, instead of 16, from their third child. They can choose to return to work sooner, but must take a minimum of eight weeks, including six after the birth, to receive pay.
The leave is paid at 100 per cent of salary, capped at €540 net per week. This is the equivalent of a €2,885 gross monthly salary."
2855 Euro gross is fairly normal in France for the bulk of the people who would need this assistance. The $650 is net take home, not gross. You also have to take into account that in France lots of things that are very costly in the USA are free and so you can't directly compare the compensation for paid maternity leave with the income of the median woman in America, that's apples and oranges. You should compare it with either the median pay in France or with the average paid leave compensation in the USA.
Finally, there is the duration of the leave to take into account 16 weeks is going on three months, which compared to the 6 weeks (or less) of maternity leave in the United States is pretty generous.
Is it costly for mothers? Well, that depends on the income of the mother before the maternity leave. But France has figure out - rightly - that if you earn lots of money that you need this assistance likely a lot less than if you do not. And so there is a cap.
https://twitter.com/markpopham/status/1189253197841350661?s=...
This is one of the many reasons why multigenerational households can be a benefit to the individuals within.
When there's a will, there's a way.
What is the answer? I don't know. As I recently read "Most people can more easily imagine the end of the world than a change in capitalism."
Countries who have done this, while still being market-based economies (capitalist), have been successful in increasing their birth rate to sustainable levels! Maybe we should try it?
She needs to make name of the company known, and was the person who made this decision. The internet will do the rest.
What I can get from this is an awareness of the issues women face, and to sensitive to these topics if I'm ever in a position to influence policy about them, or to assist someone in that situation.
Also, this woman was a commissioned sales representative. I have little knowledge how these people generally are compensated, but I do know it's different from how other employees get paid and rewarded. They usually have employment contracts and terms that are different from other staff.
I bet if most companies simply got rid of the HR departments altogether, not only would inhumane and repulsive policies like the above not exist, I bet most employees would be happier and more productive.
It was their way of making themselves feel important, and most of the staff feared the upper HR people.
I think a better solution is to have stronger laws that favor workers. HR will enforce them because they don’t want their company in legal trouble, and employees gain the benefit the laws provide. Everyone wins, more or less.
I’m sure most of those stories are true. Elizabeth Warren’s, however, was a lie.[1]
[1] https://freebeacon.com/politics/county-records-contradict-wa...
Or another:
https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2019/oct/09...
It certainly is easy enough to generate a reason acceptable to external monitors to get rid of a person. I have done this myself, and would do it again. In fact I don't think I've ever worked anywhere over the last 40 years where this is not the default approach. CYA is a thing, and always will be.
We could speculate about unrecorded behavior. What proof do we have? Warren says one thing and written records literally contradict it. If Warren’s version is to be believed, it seems obvious it would require significant evidence to contradict the meeting minutes and her own earlier quotes about graduate courses.
I understand that people might not like her policies, but this stuff is clearly targeted swift boating. It doesn’t add to to the discussion.
It's perfectly plausible that she could have been "constructively discharged" on account of her pregnancy, which morally would amount to the same thing.
But I think based on what is written, either that article or Warren has to be lying about specifics.
As a Democratic primary voter, I'm indifferent to this story, and will probably go with Warren if everyone else does, but if I cared, obviously I would check on the source, no matter how disreputable the publication.
Edit: I reread it a few times and now I think it's just BS framing by the Free Beacon. She had her contract renewed, but she resigned at the end of the school year, I'd assume before the new contract took effect. Probably was told she had to. To assume her story is perfectly consistent, you just have to assume they noticed she was pregnant in those couple of months.
Would you be this credulous then?
Pregnancy discrimination, and discrimination against women in particular, has been so insidious and so pervasive for so many years, that the standard for proof has changed accordingly.
Apples and oranges, covered by a veneer of intellectualism and a subtle accusation of partisan bias. It’s pretty transparent trolling to be honest.
The results are always the same: his die-hard supports believe him, and reality is altered; his opponents point it out and wonder how anyone can think he's not maniacal; and the Republican party sighs and repeats the mantra "you dance with the one that brought you".
Of course it’s difficult to give a general answer, and it’d depend on the details of the case.
Perhaps you have a specific example of where Trump was at the tail-end of systematic discrimination in the beginning of his career?
That aside, unemployment payments are funded as a completely separate system to every other kind of welfare in the US and so they demonstrate nothing at all about how other payments could be afforded.
I was comparing US unemployment benefits to the UK
American health insurance is usually tied to your job. If you lose your job, you can continue it, temporarily, through a provision called COBRA, but it is often outrageously expensive.
In the UK, I believe you’re able to access the NHS regardless of your employment status (right?). Equivalent insurance would cost you hundreds of dollars a month in the US, if not more, and would have to be paid from your benefits. An apples-to-apples comparison between the two system ought to include that fact.
I'm saying this while also thinking that what the company did (according to the article) is despicable and insensitive.
Why in 2017 (the date of this occurence) does management still suck at stuff like this?
It's pathetic how people are competing on grief in this Facebook generation.
She should have time to physically recover from the birth then bereavement leave like everyone else.
Through exhaustion with unaccountable corruption and reckless, ineffective public spending by all parties on the political spectrum, our societies won't support any social move (more taxes, better laws) in the name of the former, whilst being by-and-large in opposition of the latter.
Neither of the above will help in themselves though without a drastic change in the pressures requiring dual income families for mere survival, convergence in the metropolis for work, stagnant income growth coupled with soaring costs, especially around child rearing and education, and the modern narrative toward women (largely by other women) that they're nothing unless they're building a meaningful career for themselves.
While the rest of the Western World is by no means perfect and is still suffering declining birth rates due to some of the factors listed above, America's approach and policies toward social well-being - financial and moral support for maternity leave, general time off work and compassion for the sick - is utterly reprehensible. It is the most prosperous, wealthy nation on the planet and seems to be content to resign itself to a society benefiting a very small handful of people at a massive social, financial, economical and physical cost to everyone else.
A mere 8 weeks leave for going through pregnancy and bringing a child - that which we depend on for future taxes, productivity, volunteer work, philanthropy, innovation and social policy - into the world and then 2 weeks being cut in the name of money because that child died? How can anyone who supports or justifies this look at themselves in the mirror in the morning?
If you deem your country / nation / peoples to be important and worthwhile, its future to be crucial and investment in that future to be a necessity but support these policies then you're either a monster or an utter moron.
don't we also have far more pressing carbon emissions issues though ? Isn't population decline such a bad thing. Do we really need billions and billions of people because its 'good for the economy'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maternity_leave_in_the_United_...
This, while the total _paid_ leave available to mothers among OECD nations is ~54 weeks, including 18 weeks average paid maternity leave plus another long period of paid parental leave following it:
http://www.oecd.org/els/soc/PF2_1_Parental_leave_systems.pdf
https://www.nysscpa.org/news/publications/the-trusted-profes...
"Since 2014...34.3 percent worked at small companies."
And this is for "small" defined as <= 100. The percentage will be even smaller for <= 50.
It's also important to note that it's wrong to say that employees of small businesses "don't get the leave." Many small businesses will ofter leave to their employees without a federal mandate.
By "don't get the leave" I meant "aren't guaranteed the leave", of course.
curious, whats world nations ? never heard of that term before.
The idea that six to eight weeks is enough for maternity leave in even the best situation is pretty awful too.