Posted on 01/15/2015 5:31:44 AM PST by EBH
Anyone who has ever faced the challenge of raising or supporting a family, while holding down a job, has faced tough choices along the way, and likely felt stretched between the financial and personal needs of their family.
How many working parents know that sinking feeling from sending their child off to school with a fever? How many Americans have to show up to work when battling an illness even when they know they won’t be at their best, it will lengthen their recovery time, and they may likely spread their sickness to others? And how many moms and dads have been denied the ability to bond with their newborn, or to care for an aging parent, all because they could not afford to miss work? These are real, significant moments in life that nearly everyone faces at some point. The last thing we should do is add guilt, fear, and financial hardship on working parents as they try to do what’s right – while keeping their job.
Tomorrow, President Obama will announce several initiatives that will spur action and move us toward our goal of fully supporting and empowering working parents in both their roles as workers and parents.
We know that states and cities are leading the way in this fight to pass laws to protect their workers. We’ll work to support these states and cities in their efforts to bring paid leave and sick days to all working families, and the President is continuing his push to bring similar flexibility to federal workers.
So on Thursday, President Obama will call on Congress to pass the Healthy Families Act, which would allow millions of working Americans to earn up to seven days a year of paid sick time — and call on states and cities to pass similar laws. The President will outline a new plan to help states create paid leave programs, and provide new funding through the Department of Labor for feasibility studies that will help other states and municipalities figure out the best way to implement programs of their own. And the President will sign a Presidential Memorandum that will ensure federal employees have access to at least 6 weeks of paid sick leave when a new child arrives and propose that Congress offer 6 weeks of paid administrative leave as well.
These steps build on the progress made when, this past June, President Obama convened the first-ever White House Summit on Working Families, bringing together business leaders, educators, researchers, advocates, members of Congress, state and local government representatives, and American workers to have a real, honest discussion about how we can make our workplaces work better for American families. But the conversation we had that day was only the beginning. It has carried on in the months since then around the country and the President has continued to take action to make progress for families.
We know that today, 43 million private sector workers in the U.S. are without any form of paid sick leave. Only three states — California, New Jersey, and Rhode Island — offer paid family and medical leave. The United States remains the only developed country in the world that does not offer paid maternity leave.
The truth is, the success and productivity of our workers is inextricably tied to their ability to care for their families and maintain a stable life at home. More and more employers are coming to understand this. And voters get it too—from Massachusetts to Oakland, they have been showing their overwhelming bipartisan support for policies allowing workers to earn paid sick days.
At a time when all parents are working in more than 60 percent of households with children (up from just 40 percent in 1965), and 63 percent of women with children under the age of 5 participate in the labor force (compared with 31 percent in the early 1970s), one fact is resoundingly clear: The fundamental structure of our workplaces has simply not kept pace with the changing American family.
Fixing that won't just make life better for millions of American families. It will ultimately improve the financial bottom lines of the companies that choose to step up and make a change on their own – which is precisely why this news is breaking first on LinkedIn.
This is the world's largest online audience of professionals. And if you're an employer, the folks who are coming to your company's pages will be looking to see if you offer precisely these sorts of policies on your books. These are the policies that will attract the best new talent. They are the policies that will make the employees you hire more productive — and encourage them to stay longer. Keep in mind that nearly one in two working parents has turned down a job because it would not work for their family. Don’t let your job be one of those.
This is the very first place we're breaking this news because you're in the best position to drive change.
The President and his Administration have engaged workers and employers around the country in roundtable conversations about how to build 21st century workplaces that meet the needs of the 21st century workforce. And the President has received thousands of letters from people around the country sharing why these issues are so personal for them.
He heard not long ago from a mother of two in Maryland. She was working full-time while raising a family, which she said felt too often like “a no-win situation." She told us that she hopes that when her daughters are grown, "times will be different and flexibility will be the standard so that they don't have to choose between caring for their sick child or dying parent, and their job."
Let’s make that happen now.
Because we can't say we stand for family values when so many women in this country have to jeopardize their financial security just to take a few weeks off of work after giving birth.
We can't say we're for middle-class stability when a man has to sacrifice his economic security to care for his ailing mother.
If you’re an employer, ask yourself what you’re doing for your workers on paid sick days and paid leave. If you’re looking for a job, ask yourself what you want out of your employer.
The President intends to ensure that the federal government is a model employer. We'll have the most-skilled and productive workforce possible as a result.
The big, dirty, unspoken secret is that while the parenting of children is critical to the future of society, there is not one single aspect of it that benefits an employer in the short-term. This forced benefit will not improve the bottom lines of any employer other than the IRS and Jarrett nows it.
Employers tend not to worry about whether or not a well-parented little Timmy will grow up to be a promising young sales employee twenty years from now. They worry about why his dad is taking Wednesday afternoon off to go to little Timmy's baseball game now - when they have a crew of childless 25-year-olds who are willing and able to do the dad's job cheaper.
Within the limits possible, expect parents who demand and use this type of benefit to be the first ones laid off or fired, when the opportunity arises.
LinkedIn is becoming a useless welfare state echo chamber very quickly. It had promise a few years ago, but I hardly look at it now - there's always some blowhard bloviating about some new social welfare scheme with a chorus of seminar posters chiming in with comments.
‘so they are just p*****g into the wind’
No, they are buying more votes for the Dems. Period. They know it will not happen with the new Congress and then they will have a battering ram in the next election.
HEY VAL JARJAR, WHAT ISN’T A RIGHT IN OBAMALAND??
Go back to LinkdIn and report the article as “spam or a scam” if they get enough complaints, maybe they will stop doing it.
“Stuff” and TAXES.
Reducing gov’t greed would be a major first step.
Then perhaps allowing society to impose so “judgmentalism”, ie, standards of expected behavior,
resulting in better budgeting and planning on the part of the families in question.
The reason that there has been such an increase in women in the workplace is ENTIRELY due to leftist/liberal policy.
EXACTLY....when I searched for my first real job out of college and the army circa 71 I took a good look at the benefits: major medical coverage, vacation, and pension as PART OF my employment contract as in I work for this in total. Now we just make things a requirement on the employer, no choice. When we next ramp up the minimum wages to 15+ per hour, why open a business, just have a contractor shop, you can come and go on your own and take off when you want while YOU pay for all your STUFF.
Did LinkedIn shut down the comments? The comments hyperlink isn’t working for me.
Perhaps if we did not destroy marriage and drive women from their homes this would not be a problem. Maybe Ozzie and Harriet have something to teach us today.
Tell me about it. I just had a guy on my crew come back from 6 weeks of paternity leave.
Frankly, I encouraged him to take some time. "New First Time Dad" is something that you don't get a second chance at, ever. Some things are more important than work. And, he had the time, saved everything up that he could, and so forth, so he had most certainly earned it. That, and the fact that he's my top guy, merits a lot of slack.
But that didn't make re-arranging schedules, plus me working double-time to cover for him (especially over Thanksgiving and XMas), any easier.
I see the opportunity for rampant abuse in this program, and I deal with white collar workers, who are generally "Type A" overachievers. Further down the ladder .... forgetaboutit.
Why do you even have to work, Valerie? Isn’t a living income subsidy, housing, medical care, food, a cell phone, cable TV, internet access and a 60” HDTV everyone’s human right even if they don’t choose to work? Why are you oppressing the poor working man by suggesting that he has to work to get “leave”???? RACISM!!!!!!!!
More accurately, the President intends to ensure that the Federal Government is a model conduit for the transfer of funds from the hard-working to the supposedly-working.
Federal employees already get astronomical amounts of leave. They get more holidays than a private sector worker and after 3 years get a LOT of vacation and sick time.
So now those private sector workers Jarrett claims to care so much about have to pay MORE money for the feds to get time off? Disgusting.
I have a friend who is currently picking up slack for a forth maternity leave in 5 years (two different employees). She often jokes that she’s trying to find out what it would take for her to be diagnosed with a mental illness that would allow 6-12 weeks of leave. She’d never do it, but if a high level, honest worker has thought of it, the ne’er-do-well’s certainly have.
Sick leave is already abused. Ever work with someone who has Monday/Friday disease?
This is a runaway freight train. Nothing gonna stop it.
Gonna poll 87% approval with the low-infos.
Productivity has been hugely impacted with the increase of women in the workforce over the last few decades. Oh, how I wish they would stay home, take care of their own families... the dinosaur can dream, right...
To say you must not only pay me X when I work but X when I am not working is essentially an extra pay raise.
It is essentially a pay increase without a raise in productivity.
These people who think there is a right to sick leave are the same people who think you do not have a right to protect your life or that of your family.
So, God gave me a right to demand you give me money when I am sick, but He didn’t give me the right to fight with every option I have to stay alive.
Is sick leave nice? Sure it is.
A ‘right’? Somehow I think not.
.....that would be my boss.....
I'm not one of those people who expects everyone in the office to drag in, sick or no. If you're sick, you're sick. Stay home, get better, and don't infect the rest of us.
Ditto maternity/paternity leave, or time to take care of family members. Life intrudes, and at the end of the day, work really shouldn't be a top priority in comparison.
But then you have people like my boss - who realistically only puts in three days a week, most weeks. Or the person on my team who took several days of sick time because "her ferret (referred to as 'her fur child') wasn't feeling well". Legit, earned time, in most cases .... but unquestionably abusive.
And the gov't is going to give people like this a blank check? Gimme a break.
Maybe it wouldn't such a financial blow to a family for the mother to stay home with the children if the government wasn't confiscating 50% or more of the family's income.
My father, a high school dropout, and my mother raised 8 children through the 1950s, 60s, 70s and 80s while my mother stayed home to tend to her children and the house. No welfare and no hand outs. My father in the sixties had his own business that he eventually had to give up because his partner (his brother was dishonest) after that my father held a number of jobs but always was a valued employee and worked hard.
My stay at home mom cared for my fathers mother in her decline and later he own mother in her final days. Family used to care for family in time of need. That is the cement that holds society together. The government is trying to destroy family by dissolving the bonds that hold us together. Government is trying to supplant the family and is so doing control us individually.
Why can’t (read:won’t) workers set aside 7 days of pay per year for such a time? Why must it be the RESPONSIBILITY of an employer to see to the personal security of employees?
Do the nanny state and its useless idiot tools think the average employee is too stoopid or lazy to be personally responsible adults?
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