I see you already got an earful but I just can't get over the fact that you gave me a 421 word exposé describing how unproductive it would be to employ a female of child-bearing years over a male after saying you've never heard of America referred to as "the land of productivity". Maybe you haven't heard it but it's clearly part of your psyche. I'm going to petition your gov't to have "land of productivity" added to your national anthem so it gets equal air time with "land of the free" and "home of the brave". In my mind, America is much closer to "the land of productivity" than it is to "the land of the free" - I absolutely LOVE visiting the USA but I have never had to show my identification as often in any other country I've visited and don't get me started on paying before you pump gas...
I think you completely missed my point. There are many companies offering extensive maternity & paternity leave as part of their benefits packages to draw the best and brightest employees! My company offers 5 weeks paid vacation plus 10 days paid sick leave / personal days as well as 95% Health Insurance Premium. (employee pays 5% of annual premium split across their weekly payroll, comes out to about $8/week pre tax)
But if it is Required of all employers by government legislation, then there is no benefit to being the schmuck that makes the investment blindly. In that case, it would be my responsibility to be biased against hiring young females. It's the unintended consequences of feel good government policy. It secures the politicians election prospects because it sounds good, but when the reality sets in it's actually most destructive to the very ones it claims to be helping.
There was mention of Welfare Queens. So the cradle to grave multgenerational welfare machines is proclaimed to be a safety net to help poor single moms rise out of poverty right? Except by design, if there is a father figure present the payments are not only stopped, but charged back to the fathers. The number one contributing factor in poverty and crime statistics is unwed mothers raising children with no father figure. But yet the very system "designed to help" is actually paying mothers to stay single and penalizing fathers who want to take responsibility for their own children! It's feel good policy designed to keep the politicians in power by intentionally perpetuating the problem and creating more and more dependent cradle to grave poverty. To understand policy, it's necessary to study the results rather than fighting over the intentions.
I didn't miss your point - you don't have a valid one wrt the system I described to you. The company
doesn't pay you for the mandatory leave; the legal requirement is that time off
must be given and job
must be protected so that you can return to it. The company's permission is not required for the person to take parental leave. It would be a grave and costly mistake for a company to even attempt to deny the parental leave. If a company wants to offer a greater incentive for employees such as 5 weeks of paid
maternity leave to attract "the best and the brightest", they're still free to do that so I fail to see where there's no benefit in making the "investment". The only way you're a schmuck (at least in the free world) is to continue with the misogynistic tone your company takes with respect to hiring women over men because... babies!
And just to bolster my point about the land of productivity; America is a dinosaur when it comes to paid vacation (in fact, is no federal or state statutory minimum paid vacation or paid public holidays). The only other countries that haven't mandated paid vacation yet are: Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, and Tonga.
Speaking of welfare queens:
https://subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org/top-100-parentsNB
There are 48 companies in this list at 1 billion dollars or more