From: randall@informix.com (Randall Rhea)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,alt.president.clinton
Subject: Re: Family leave (wasL Re: Clinton's flip-flop on Haitians!)
Date: 28 Jan 93 00:22:44 GMT
Organization: Informix Software, Inc.

jlinder@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Jeffrey S Linder) writes:
>>
>>The problem is that many companies are run by people that cannot
>>or will not understand that our society has changed dramatically
>>over the past 25 years.  The working mother is a fact - a reality.
>>Wishing for a return to the "good ol days" won't change anything.
>>When your child gets sick, child care organizations and babysitters
>>won't take him/her.   A parent must take care of the child in these
>>cases.  To do so, you risk losing your job in many companies.  One
>>can say, "just go to another company with a more progressive
>>policy", but in this recession, that's difficult if not impossible
>>to do.

>Baloney.  If that employee has made themselves worth keeping, the company
>will keep them and their (sometimes substanial) investment in that employee.


This comment is naiive.  Companies regularly dismiss/lay off 
employees or allow them to go to another company, whether they have
"substantial investment" in them or not.  They just get rid of 
people, and they don't really care.   Conservatives tend to
assume that labor is a perfectly free market, and that companies
always behave logically.  Both assumptions are false.

Few companies in the U.S. have a Family Leave policy.  Many have
no leave policy at all, except for a vaction and holiday plan.  The average 
vacation time per year in the U.S. is 10 days per year per employee, 
the lowest in the western world.    (By contrast, Spain has 30, 
Germany 25, and the UK 22.)   The U.S. is pathetically behind
other countries in allowing employees free time, and there is
no movement to change that.  There is now a Family Leave bill 
before Congress because companies regularly terminate employees who miss 
too much work time due to family problems.   

"Welfare capitalism" is being dismantled.  Large companies who
have liberal benefits are laying off employees in record numbers
and cutting these benefits.   Fully paid medical benefits, lengthy
vacation time, company pensions, and other perks are going out the
window.  There are few if any allowances for such things as
"family leave" in today's cost-cutting environment.   The only 
way to get companies to grant Family Leave is to force them to 
do so.  

We no longer live in a country where almost all mothers stay at home
to take care of the kids.  Most mothers work.  When a child is
sick, someone must stay home to take care of him/her.   The person
who does can be, and often is, terminated from employment.  The
result is an economic disaster for the family, often leading
to increased child neglect and more people on the welfare rolls.
Society has changed, and so therefore must companies and the
government.

It is fine to have a "government hands-off" philosophy ... that is
until YOU have a sick child and YOU lose your job.

-- 

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Randall Rhea                                        Informix Software, Inc. 
Project Manager, MIS Sales/Marketing Systems    uunet!pyramid!infmx!randall
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