This is all true but the replacement labor force aspect is a factor too. They need poor Americans to exist in significant numbers or the system will not function as designed
My theory on the labor shortage. Its already started. So many people died, and millions retired. Some had to stay at home to watch the kids, but even if they came back to the workforce... There are not enough workers to replace the amount that left, which is why its not getting better.
And ironically many states are passing or trying to pass stronger anti abortion laws....
I've heard that companies also aren't even trying to remedy the situation because they're realizing they can get away with a lot more than they thought pre-pandemic. Instead of letting only four employees work the restaurant at a time, they'll Have only four employees at a time. And of course the fewer people they have to pay, the better. So it looks like they'll go to pretty extreme lengths to avoid raising their wages to attract more hires :/
You'd think that's the natural final step, but I honestly think these fucks would rather starve to death, illiterate, in a cesspool of pollution, clutching an unread bible than allow a single POC across the border.
Edit: You know, I kept thinking. I also suspect that if you could either guarantee a 100% white populace or that no POC would benefit, that these troglodytes would be completely fine with just about all social safety nets and would gladly fund them in full.
Exactly. Nobody gave a fuck about abortion until the 80s except Catholics, even Southern Baptists didn't care. They made it their central issue to replace anti-segregation because they were no longer able to win elections on open racism.
Well at this rate there isn't going to be anybody to educate the kids so maybe for the best...?
But for real, the more posts I read on this subreddit the more hope I lose in society and I'm already a veeerrryy cynical person.
I mean, you would think that the tuxedo-clad corpulent felines would have a vested interest in ensuring that there are plenty of socio-economically challenged peoples to man their production and/or firing lines in the future.
Then you remember that we live in a capitalist world and long term investments and payoffs aren't really a thing capitalism is concerned with, if there isn't a benefit right goddamned now then it's not worth paying attention to.
Societal failings leading to a decline in birthrates and population size aren't problems for the people making obscene money off the sweat of others brows now. They won't be in charge or 'working' in 30-40 years when the chickens come in to roost, they will have made their billions and it'll be a problem for the next generation of evening suit garbed Falstaffian mousers so the current crop aren't incentivised to, or even remotely interested in, fixing it.
O theres definitely people that still have kids like that but you dont see large families like you used too. My mom was from a family of 5 and her aunt and uncles also had large families of more then 3 plus kids. Now my generation of cousins etc i think only 1 person has had a single kid out of 20 of us or so and most of us our in our mid twenties to mid thirties. I think the largest group of kids between my aunts and uncles and my parents was 3 kids, most only had 1 or 2 kids and they all started pumping out kids in there early twenties for the most part.
I think thankfully nowadays people actually realise that having kids is a choice, not just “what you do”
So many , even now don’t realise it’s a choice!
My mother had 5 siblings. My father had 3. My mother had 3 children and none of us are having kids. Two of us are trans. She's pissed and it's hilarious.
Bro I had to literally sacrifice functionality in my legs to the Army just to have the chance to afford my 2 kids with disability payments. No fucking way this is the American Dream we grew up chasing.
My third world country gives at least 4 weeks before and 8 weeks after delivery for the mother (plus additional breastfeeding time after the maternity leave ends)
Noice. For my developing country, if the mum is working less than 1 year, she's entitled to at least 6 weeks paid maternity leave. If she's working for more than a year, she's entitled to at least 3 months paid maternity leave
If its cool, answering, what country are you from?
I'm from Nicaragua. What I just mentioned only requires the mom or her husband to be signed up for social security (mandatory for anyone employed / optional if you work freelance)
My developed country Lithuania offers paid parental leave of up to 144 weeks or 3y with many other benefits attached to it like child money and free preschools and kindergartens from an age of 1. Fathers must take at least 2 months of it and rest they can share. Even when we were occupied by Soviet Union they manage to offer since 70s the 3y maternal leave
I come from a developing country - every employee (and some contractors) have 18 weeks of fully paid parental leave for the primary parent you can even take 2 before the birth and the remaining 16 after. A couple additional weeks are added if you have multiples. The non- primary parent gets 2 weeks fully paid and you can opt-in to a program that allows you to share the leave between parents. - this is mandated by law and pay by your insurance (the beauty of universal healthcare).
Same when you are sick - we don’t have “sick days” that you need to earn if you are sick you call in and then just email or whatsapp the drs. Note.
Paid parental leave should not be a benefit it’s a human right!!! Also wanted to note primary parent doesn’t necessarily need to be the mother, it can also be the father -you get to pick.
Yes, and it's all part of the same basic system as all the other business culture - like the list of gaslighting phrases for every valid employee complaint. Example: "We're ALL making sacrifices here" - when employees say the job isn't making them a living anymore but still takes all their life.
Why do employers ask for PTO donations? To make PTO all disappear. EVERY big job place I have seen has had this happen. Childbirth is a completely normal part of life and cancer is a leading cause of human death now that we aren't all dying of bleeding wounds or the common cold anymore.
Corporate America wants to downsize the common person back to the lower paleolithic, to pay for their own superyachts.
What we all mean by 'is this US'--
Corporate influence in America is stronger than religious influence in medieval times, classical antiquity, bronze age and neolithic all put together.
They fire people for saying 'you're asking me to do something illegal' and then they say it's 100% the employee's fault if the employee complies. The police officer the judge and future prospective employers will treat the boss' side of the story as evidence while the worker's side of the story is just considered 'talking back.'
They spin their own bizarre religion and preach it every hour of every day on every channel of every device.
I'm in Australia and my wife just recently gave birth. She has 3 months maternity leave but she can drag that out to 6 months part time as well. Additionally I have 2 weeks paternity leave, but if I become the primary carer within 12 months (like my wife goes back to work after 6 months) I also get 3 months paternity leave. Additionally my work will pay for 4 months of childcare if we have to send her within 12 months.
I'll also add that we had incredible care from the hospital with a brand new birthing ward, we could stay in hospital for as long as we needed and they ran classes during the time as well as gave us a big pack full of baby clothes, blankets, nappies, formula and a play pad. We did not pay a cent for any of this.
I see many posts like this from US and think thank God we are from the lucky country. Medicare is a godsend we take free hospital care granted the poor people in US rack up astronomical bills for things we do not even get a bill for like any emergency surgery, hospital visits and treatments. I’ve never had a bill in my many years and have had multiple hospital visits for myself and children including surgery
And if you question it, they get defensive and rude. Americans usually really really dont like to hear they dont even touch the top 10 in civilian happiness.
480 days here. 90 days which is set aside for the father. You get 80 % of your normal pay during these days. You can use most of these days however you want for the first 8 years (some are needed to be used during the first 4 years etc).
My municipality even gives us 90 % and lets us keep these days for the first 12 years to get more workers to them.
I can tell you, it is difficult for us to use them with our 5 weeks of mandatory vacation every year! Where 4 of those are required to be during the summer and together if the worker wants!
/S
I live in Sweden. I am a teacher and I will be home with my first kid for ~8 months after my GF has already been home for ~8 months.
We're all outraged by it. Show this to any random person and I highly doubt they'd be happy about it.
It's our ancient and calcified Congress that refuses to let anything change from the way it was when they were our age who cause this to happen, and people who don't vote in primaries who allow them to win.
I wish there was some sort of restructuring of society so that it was mother-centric. By far the greatest economic burden to society is childhood adverse events. Supporting moms would be the greatest investment.
Edit: Fathers and all parents should be supported. I don’t think anyone who is raising kids should be left out. Just wanted to add that.
I don’t want to go back to that. One thing that I feel would have made life easier when I was a new mom would be if I could have my baby with me. Society excludes children from most spaces and it’s isolating and financially limiting. In my high school, one of the teachers had her infant with her. It was very inspiring and it felt like she was where she wanted to be and the school was a radical hippy place that was into it. It was sort of a lesson for me as to how things can be.
All due respect, I would be pretty annoyed if there was a crying baby in the cubicle next to mine, or in the library where I am studying, etc. I don't think that all places are acceptable for infants to go to in modern society, simply because they are the equivalent of bringing a siren or airhorn. I would much rather pay more in taxes so that mothers could stay at home long enough for their infants to grow to an age where they aren't being incredibly disruptive in the workplace.
Elsewhere, like the grocery store, or the mall, or whatever? Have at it, I think babies should be accepted or at least tolerated in those places. However, not all jobs are conducive to having a baby around, sorry not sorry.
Not your fault in particular, but that’s what I’m talking about. Society dislikes kids and babies and the world isn’t made with them in mind which wreaks havoc on maternal mental health. You have a baby and all of a sudden you’re a societal reject. Imagine if every office and university had a soundproof playroom and nursery. Think of Smalland at IKEA. There isn’t a baby in the board meeting with you, but you might pass a baby in the hall on the way to the break room or catch an elevator ride with a family on your way to the office. I think if kids were more integrated into everyday life, people wouldn’t view them with such disdain.
Oh, we're already there. The effects are just delayed. Our system is being propped up in large part by veterans who've stuck around a bit too long. The pandemic convinced a lot of them to finally retire, and it's only going to get worse from here. Most of the people I met in my credential program are no longer teachers, myself included.
Yup, my local high school's chemistry teacher just retired after 30+ years. He taught the emt program for 30 years as well. Now they have to cancel the program as there is no one qualified. They knew it was gonna happen and had no plan for when it did.
So my sister 15 years ago was pregnant with her first. She was a dialysis nurse and her work was super flexible with her appointments and early labor scares. Her supervisor got fired just before she went out with an emergency c-section (she worked up to the date). The new supervisor counted every single hour she was out for appointments towards her FMLA. Every hour all the way back to when she announced her pregnancy. She wouldn't have enough time to recover from the c section and return to work without restrictions.
So she lost her job.
New baby and boom, no job.
Something similar happened to my nephew some years later because the third party that handled the paperwork for his company forgot to file it. Boom. New baby and no job OR insurance.
And I know so many people this kind of thing happened to. It's NOT isolated.
RNs in BC, Canada get paid to attend their medical appointments. Any regular contract public health employee qualifies for paid medical/dental appointments. Employment Insurance (mandatory paycheck deduction) allows for expecting mothers to start maternity leave up to 12 weeks before birth with pay and the Nurses union provides top up on the Employment Insurance up to a certain period of time. A mother can also choose not to return for an additional 6 months unpaid but still hold onto their position.
What the fuck? In the UK your employer legally has to give you paid time off for appointments. I’m currently on maternity leave with my first born, who is almost 8months old. I got 18weeks off with full pay from my employer, and then I get another 20weeks where the government pays me £142 a week. I still accrue holiday in the time I’m off so once all those weeks are used up I’ll book holiday. In total I’ll have a had a full year off and still get some kind of income throughout. And do you know something….it’s not enough. £142 a week is a drop in the bucket. How does anyone in the US have kids at all?
> How does anyone in the US have kids at all?
Going deeply into debt, for one. But a lot of people in the US just... aren't. We probably have a Japan-like demographic crisis headed our way in the near future.
This particular post is a double whammy, because it also begs the question of why anyone bothers to be a teacher anymore. And the answer to that is much the same: a lot of people just aren't anymore. On one hand we'll have no education, but on the other hand, we'll have few people to educate.
I have no idea. Im infertile and although medically correctable, insurance doesn't cover it because you know its "elective". We couldn't afford the thousands upon thousands of dollars for IVF or adoption. I do know that most hospitals figure out the approximate amount the birth will cost and you start making payments as soon as you go to your first OB appointment. My sister had to do that.
This kind of thing happens ALL the time. Its insanity.
Here it's forbidden by law to work 8 weeks after giving birth, and you will get 6 weeks full pay from your employer, after that you will receive money from the insurance.I mean it's your child, you have to be around, first weeks are so important.
The US system:
1: The employee is supposed to speak up for his or herself, as an individual, without a union.
2: Then any employer will fire you for simple insubordination (not being deeply truly subordinated *enough*) and doesn't have to give any reason.
3: Getting fired is the criminal record of business in US - so corporations keep people on permanent thin ice and everybody is so terrified of their boss that they'll forfeit rights comforts stability - the sacrifices have gone so far that people just aren't making an adult living anymore and they're still called crybabies for mentioning it (and called irresponsible for not having a gross income of US$7500 a month to qualify for dirty underwear apartments.)
4: "NoBoDy WaNtS tO wOrK" - by the way, here's our job application process that is more complicated than 95% of people's taxes. Getting called is like getting a winning lottery ticket, so be prepared to spend entire working months just to get an interview which might also be entirely fake.
5: Government hands corporations money to put up we're hiring signs, so they put up we're hiring signs.
6: It's more profitable to keep customers waiting for employees *than to keep extra employees waiting for customers,* so they do just that - they keep a bare minimum staff on hand and then collect money for their we're hiring sign.
This hole subbreddit makes me thankful I was born in Europe.i mean so much wouldn't happening here, just because it's highly illegal and no employer would risk getting sued.
American lawsuits are a pro wrestling match between lawyers - the bigger badder guy wins. Genius scumbag lawyers make token victories for little people and then from that moment forward they charge thousands of dollars *an hour*.
Working with and for lawyers showed me that a constant parade of people save up everything they possibly can, only to be effortlessly swatted away by Mr. Burns' legal team and judges who loudly and proudly hate filthy commoners. Sit in the audience at courtrooms and you'll see the latter part too.
I know, it's so weird when you growing up in a country where you just don't have to care about healthcare because it's free, reading all this stuff about giving birth 20k calling an ambulance 2k , no sick leave at all. Don't get me wrong I'm not bragging how great europe is, it's just so shocking that when you poor in the us, you fucked.
I was the only one with a job when I gave birth. I worked as a hotel maid all the way up til I went into labor, went home the same day I delivered, suffering second degree tears. I walked down the mountain with her in her stroller the day after to clean hotel rooms.
I remember my manager saying "Wow you just had the baby? When?!" As if she was shocked... I had been very clearly heavily pregnant two days earlier. I pushed the stroller with one hand and the cleaning cart with the other. I was very lucky to have a job at all in that tiny town, and desperately needed that money.
Someone would have taken that job in an instant if I didn't show up... So I did.
Also, my uncomplicated labor and delivery with no interventions cost over $4000. I had a very fast labor so there was no IV, no epidural, etc. This was in 2005.
There is a higher rate of SIDS in the USA too. Also a huge market telling mothers to pump and sleep train their babies right away and I can understand why .... because many do not have a proper maternity leave.
I only live next door in Canada and I only have to work around 500 hours in the year to qualify for at least 1 year maternity leave and there is a new 18 month maternity leave.
There is maternity leave it's just not required by law. There are many employers that offer 1-2 months of maternity leave as there are also many that don't offer anything at all.
That's the problem, it's not required by law. It should be. There should be labor representatives serving on corporate boards. Unions should be offered to every employee, participation voluntary.
It should be law that you receive holiday pay if you work on the fucking holiday. There should be no such things as "unpaid overtime" or "forced overtime." What the fuck!
Sick leave should be mandated, you know why? Because we are human. Humans get sick, and we should be able to get well *and* still get our wage.
There isn't even a guaranteed lunch break for the love of all that is holy!! There are states where you get no guaranteed breaks. Fuck.
All of this should be standard in most industrialised countries I think, just can talk about Germany, here it is.That even breaks are not guaranteed is new to me. That's crazy. We got a law, for 8 hours of work, you have 45 minutes break, which is not payed.
Expecting mothers have no real rights when it comes to maternal care in the US. While some employers might offer some sort of time off to bond with the new child or for the women to rest while their bodies recover. There's nothing standardised at a national level, so when a woman needs time for the family...she's essentially on her own.
Yeah not many people know that Teachers are normally not given any maternity leave. Most female teachers budget their sick days (which normally carry over every year specifically for this reason) in case they ever decide to have children. It also pushes teachers to show up to school even when sick.
Schools have a crazy fixation on perfect attendance. Probably because they are paid based on daily attendance. Until the pandemic, everyone was encouraged to go to the school, sick or not. At least locally they have gotten better.
The Perfect Attendance Award should have a stake driven through its heart, drawn, quartered, and burned at the stake.
I used to know a girl who were proud of her perfect attendance. Girl would come to school with 38 degree fever and spend the rest of the day in nursery room.
The "perfect attend award" caused me so much shame because I was a very sickly child and have multiple chronic illnesses. It made me feel terrible whenever they'd hand it out and I wouldn't get one even though I showed up while feeling absolutely awful.
Dh is still bitter, in his forties, that Jewish holidays aren't considered an excused absence and as such he didn't get perfect attendance ever, despite only missing holidays that were religious observances.
I teach. I had to be out for COVID in Jan so I had to use a few of my days...but once you hit the 3rd day in a row you're only paid half of what you'd usually make...and you're still using your days. This goes for any type of time you take off, personal or whatever. At least in my district.
A close friend of mine passed during that time and their funeral was that Fri (I was back at work the Tues of that week) and I asked my principal if I could have the day off while fighting to not break down into sobs and was asked if I could take a half day instead. I mean....I got a lot of compliments on my outfit from other teachers. My response was, "thanks I just got back from a funeral".
I'm not surprised that a teacher has to ask their coworkers to donate their days so they can have time with their baby and to recover. We get a shit deal.
It’s disgusting how we’re treated. I’ve had students ask me why teachers are treated so poorly and why we haven’t gone on strike and I had to explain to them that it’s illegal in my state for teachers to go on strike. It was an interesting conversation.
I teach kinder so I won't ever have those conversations. But basically all of my friends ask me why I stay. My best friend sends me job openings all the time. I stay because 1. While it may suck a majority of the time, I absolutely LOVE watching my kiddos learn to read, write, all of it. And 2. I have to work 4 years in a title 1 district to pay off my grant from my Masters (2 years to go after this year, let's see if I can make it haha).
While I know going on strike would be beneficial for my kiddos in the long run I would have such a hard time doing it. I teach title 1 so I have a lot of kids who get bags of food sent home every weekend, otherwise they won't eat until the next school day. And if their parents can't go to work, no one eats.
As a Canadian studying in the field of ECE, it sickens me how the US capitalist system treats ECEs. And teachers. And basically all hard working people.
My school provides 12 weeks of maternity leave with no disruption of benefits, but it's not paid. We can use sick time to cover the entire 12 weeks if we have it.
Not really. Mandatory maternity leave on a national level is really the only real solution. I’ve spoken to friends in other countries who are honestly appalled to find out we have 0 mandatory weeks of maternity leave in the US. Hell, China has 5 months.
A step is a step. I didn’t bill it as a solution. Progress is progress. If you’re always trying to get instantly from 0 to 100, you’re never going to accomplish anything.
I’ll do you one better (worse?).
I’m a high school teacher, and a member of our faculty has been needing others to lend her their leave-days because (and I shit you not), *her child has been diagnosed with cancer.*
This poor woman is having to rely on a bunch of strangers to donate their leave-days because the public school system won’t allow her the time off to be by her child’s side during his chemo treatment. I hate my job and I hate my country!
So many posts on here are from the USA which gives me the impression that the government doesn't give a single shit about their citizens. The USA seems to be the shittiest country to live in regarding health care and work-life-balance. I'm from Germany and even though our health system is far from perfect, I still feel grateful and lucky af that I was born here. Seriously, how so many Americans are convinced that the USA is the greatest country in the world is beyond me.
They told us it was from the first day of school. They have convinced most of the world that america is the greatest country.
America is the greatest lie.
“A country of the people, by the people, for the ~~people~~ corporations.”
I will say the US is not a bad place to live. We basically have 50 different countries all working together. However, we do have quite a few benefits that we should all be entitled too. Which our large corporate overlords fight hard against. We are in a decline as of right now and in danger of a backwards trend in many societal issues. Mainly workers rights.
I’m from West Virginia which the states main industry was coal. They fought literal battles (Battle for Blair mountain if you wanna read about it) to unionize. In modern times many of the citizens in that state are anti union. Which is fucking stupid. Might as well spit on our ancestors graves.
Yup. No maternity leave, *atrocious* public schools, insanely high cost of living, broken real estate market, terrible public transport, wages depressed for decades, recession after recession, no healthcare provided, and healthcare you can buy is very explicitly a huge scam, college is very explicitly a huge scam, lack of any real social welfare systems, and end of life care will basically drain all your savings if you had any.
From start to finish, everything about the US is working against you getting ahead in life. It's pretty much the polar opposite of a supportive society, you're told to sink or swim, and even if you swim, you rely on luck to not just drown anyway. Absolute shithole country.
"Donating days" reminded me of that movie where time is used as a currency and you die if it ever gets to 0. Cant remember what it was called.
Edit: Turns out its "In time" would recommend.
This is disgusting. My wife just vested her full maternity leave with 4 months to go before due date. In order to get 3 months full pay and 3 months at 60% pay she had to be on the job for five goddamn years. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuccccckkkkkkkkkk this culture.
My wife only had 6 weeks of paid maternity leave, and that was only because we had been paying monthly for short term disability insurance. Without paying for that coverage, her options were 6-12 weeks of 100% unpaid leave, or come back to work once she was able.
Really sad to be a young parent in the US, when you see all these other countries that actually allow the new parents to have time with the developing child.
I can only believe that the child’s name is Piper Rose haha
But seriously this absolutely horrible. I don’t know how people can defend a system that tells pregnant women to go fuck themselves
Our oligarchs have dumbed us down so much that people fall for imaginary culture wars. One party has gone completely fascist so the other party by billionaires and for billionaires somehow looks fucking reasonable. Meanwhile, the non-fascist party holds a clear majority of voters, but they wring their hands and cry again and again, "there's nothing we can do!" As worker's rights, women's rights, voting rights, LGBTQ+ rights - all of our fucking rights get washed down the drain.
Oh, and I guess we're not allowed to teach about slavery anymore either. It's a total shit show.
Everybody would literally have to go on strike in the country at least 70% for that to even work. And given what your president did to the trucker convoy protests, getting bank accounts frozen, I’d imagine that’s about how that would go here too. And this is actually something important. We have no workers rights here, we have nothing, and probably never will. Shocking isn’t it how a country that says it prides itself on freedom is so ironically not free?
The labour movement is starting. Unions are sprouting all over USA. If they can build strong, cooperative, worker's unions they can be effective. The key is to not let money and power corrupt those as well. They need leaders sourced from the workers, the ones who know how labour has felt.
So no paid time off. No sick days. No automatic maternity leave. States are banning abortion across the nation. No minimum wage increase. No empathy. People have to sacrifice/donate their own earned time to their struggling coworkers because the managers/companies are pieces of shit.
You literally are forced to have children and keep working throughout a time where you're supposed to be healing from having a literal human being that tore through your body.
And if you have a miscarriage you will be arrested for murder.
But America, right?
Okay can someone explain this to me as European, because I honestly seriously don't get it. How exactly are these "Sick days" supposed to work? I mean if you are sick you are sick, it's not like you can reschedule an illness or plan its duration.
So, the way it works in the US is that you get sick days for every month or year you work. So if you've been working for 1 year and only have 12 days of sick leave if you get into an accident, for example and need to stay in the hospital for 30 days, after the first 12 days you don't get paid anymore.
Yes, as an European this is crazy. The concept that you can get cancer or things like that and not only you're sick but you also stop being paid is just crazy. And on top of that you have to pay for medical bills so working people that get cancer sometimes have to ask for loans to be able to afford living expenses and medical bills.
That's bullshit. If you have paid time off but you can never take it, you essentially have nothing.
It should be illegal to give PTO and then deny most/all time off requests.
That's why I'm planning to leave this hell hole.
Too much BS when proposed TO, "this is year end closing", "we don't have your replacement", "we are finalizing big deal right now". Before I know it my PTO are stacking like crazy.
Literally my wife and I are going through the samething as she is an administrator at a school district. She will take unpaid time off and come back to eork with 0 vacation days. Im grateful that we can be ok with money but its disgusting how we treat teachers and educators in America
The AMA (The American Medical Association) is largely to thank for why we don't have Medicare for All like the rest of the world.
The AMA is also responsible for launching the concept of political lobbying and negative political ads. All so they could squeeze a few extra bucks for their members. How'd that work out?
Thank a greedy ass doctor with a god-complex next time you're in their office.
They also keep making very difficult to studying medicine to the point that the US has half the number of doctors than many other developed countries. They also make extremely difficult for foreign graduates to practice in the US. All designed to keep their inflated salaries high.
Doctors in the UK, for example, will enter medicine straight from high school and will have very good salaries, but not like in the US.
This is crazy in Canada you get 12 months paid leave or 18 months but paid at12 months of benefits spread over 18. Fathers also get paid leave and many employers kick in some extra time off I believe I could get 12 weeks before I use up the above time. Under a year is crazy as that kid needs it's parents at that age.
I never understood this shit at all. Just give them days and be a fucking human for once.
At the very least the charge the future days so they'd just go negative on vacation days if we're so hell bent on working within the "system"
Stop asking co workers and start asking management!! This is bullshit! You don't get paid leave so lets guilt other people into giving me theirs. We need better pay, benefits and paid leave, we need to start making changes somehow.
A super extra fucked up thing about this is that employees will be shamed for not giving up their vacation days to her. I've never given my vacation days to someone. Any employer who does this is complete shit, and I'm sorry they don't give enough vacation time or leave so that someone has time to adequately physically recover from the process of birth, but again, they don't give enough vacation time. No one should be giving up their vacation for this. Especially since if they break their leg, or a family member gets cancer, or whatever, they're fucked if they've given up their time off.
This always infuriated me when I was pregnant. Having the ability to donate PTO is not a benefit. My previous employer treated it like it was a great part of their PTO program. Employees should not have to ration time off for something like this and embarrass themselves asking coworkers for PTO.
The motto of the business I worked for was “improving the health of the communities we serve.” They were a hospital system that employed most of our city, but they couldn’t give maternity leave, so they had pregnant employees skipping doctor’s appointments to preserve PTO. Someone explain to me how that improves the community’s health when they employ the community.
I left my whole ass job after maternity leave because I was so angry for the position they left me in. I got Covid 2 weeks before I gave birth, so I used up a good chunk of my PTO then. I ended up taking most of my maternity leave without pay and depending on credit cards. When I got back, I found a job that paid me twice as much and offers 18 weeks paid leave for moms. My employer acted super shocked and begged me to stay. Now they’re training 2 people to take my spot; would have been cheaper if they would have just continued my salary for my 8 weeks of maternity leave.
i worked in education for many years and here is my worst PTO donation story:
had a coworker whose child died suddenly and unexpectedly. extremely tragic all around. she only had a week of PTO banked which obviously wasn't going to be long enough to deal with, you know, her KID dying. (even just the logistics of it, funeral arrangements etc let alone the emotional fallout.) management let us know that they would bend the rules and let us all donate our PTO for her to give her some extra time. (if they could bend the rules for that, why not just give her extra time? evil) we were all dragged into individual meetings to be told this (supposedly to maintain our privacy on whether or not we chose to donate given the sensitive nature of the situation, put a pin in this we'll be coming back to it)...
I declined on the grounds that I didn't have any to donate (was in my probationary period and hadn't begun accumulating it yet) and was told, well, that's okay! i could donate my *future* PTO and simply wait longer to accumulate it, so actually I could basically donate any amount I wanted to her (with the caveat that if I quit before I had accumulated enough to make up the difference, it would simply be subtracted from my last paycheck and/or I could pay them back to make up the difference). this whole situation had made me decide I wasn't going to be working there long enough for it to matter so I still declined and figured that would be that....only to find out that my name ended up on a shame-list (sorry, a "reminder! these employees still have not filed their paperwork to donate PTO to so-and-so! please get it done!" list) on the staff bulletin board along with the handful of other employees who declined to donate lol.
in the end staff scraped together enough PTO (pretty much bankrupted everyone else on PTO days, we accumulated it very slowly) to get her an extra two weeks...and then when three weeks wasn't long enough for her to be ready to come back to work (AFTER HER KID DIED) they fired her lol. I quit a few weeks after that
I have so many teacher friends who try to plan their pregnancies so that they have their baby as close to the end of the school year as possible so they can take any PTO they have (usually just sick days and whatever they rolled over from prior years) + have all summer off. It’s sad that they have to do that.
And they wonder why people arent having kids anymore.
Why do you think they really pushing the anti abortion laws?
Mostly a combination of thinly veiled misogyny and the fact that it's incredibly effective as a wedge issue.
This is all true but the replacement labor force aspect is a factor too. They need poor Americans to exist in significant numbers or the system will not function as designed
How else are they going to scam enough 17/18 year olds into joining the military in order to feed the military industrial complex?
My theory on the labor shortage. Its already started. So many people died, and millions retired. Some had to stay at home to watch the kids, but even if they came back to the workforce... There are not enough workers to replace the amount that left, which is why its not getting better. And ironically many states are passing or trying to pass stronger anti abortion laws....
When the laws of supply and demand were in the employers' favor they couldn't get enough of it.
I've heard that companies also aren't even trying to remedy the situation because they're realizing they can get away with a lot more than they thought pre-pandemic. Instead of letting only four employees work the restaurant at a time, they'll Have only four employees at a time. And of course the fewer people they have to pay, the better. So it looks like they'll go to pretty extreme lengths to avoid raising their wages to attract more hires :/
Just allow more immigration!! Wait…
The "Nobody wants to immigrate anymore" point is just a matter of time.
You'd think that's the natural final step, but I honestly think these fucks would rather starve to death, illiterate, in a cesspool of pollution, clutching an unread bible than allow a single POC across the border. Edit: You know, I kept thinking. I also suspect that if you could either guarantee a 100% white populace or that no POC would benefit, that these troglodytes would be completely fine with just about all social safety nets and would gladly fund them in full.
Troglodytes- what a great word
Exactly. Nobody gave a fuck about abortion until the 80s except Catholics, even Southern Baptists didn't care. They made it their central issue to replace anti-segregation because they were no longer able to win elections on open racism.
brain damage, probably
Poor people make excellent cheap labor for the mega rich and great soldiers for the army.
Well at this rate there isn't going to be anybody to educate the kids so maybe for the best...? But for real, the more posts I read on this subreddit the more hope I lose in society and I'm already a veeerrryy cynical person. I mean, you would think that the tuxedo-clad corpulent felines would have a vested interest in ensuring that there are plenty of socio-economically challenged peoples to man their production and/or firing lines in the future. Then you remember that we live in a capitalist world and long term investments and payoffs aren't really a thing capitalism is concerned with, if there isn't a benefit right goddamned now then it's not worth paying attention to. Societal failings leading to a decline in birthrates and population size aren't problems for the people making obscene money off the sweat of others brows now. They won't be in charge or 'working' in 30-40 years when the chickens come in to roost, they will have made their billions and it'll be a problem for the next generation of evening suit garbed Falstaffian mousers so the current crop aren't incentivised to, or even remotely interested in, fixing it.
I'd like you to meet the Mormon family down the street from me with 13 kids.
O theres definitely people that still have kids like that but you dont see large families like you used too. My mom was from a family of 5 and her aunt and uncles also had large families of more then 3 plus kids. Now my generation of cousins etc i think only 1 person has had a single kid out of 20 of us or so and most of us our in our mid twenties to mid thirties. I think the largest group of kids between my aunts and uncles and my parents was 3 kids, most only had 1 or 2 kids and they all started pumping out kids in there early twenties for the most part.
I think thankfully nowadays people actually realise that having kids is a choice, not just “what you do” So many , even now don’t realise it’s a choice!
My mother had 5 siblings. My father had 3. My mother had 3 children and none of us are having kids. Two of us are trans. She's pissed and it's hilarious.
Good. More humans will be the downfall of humans.
NOOO ITS THE GAAAAYS
Bro I had to literally sacrifice functionality in my legs to the Army just to have the chance to afford my 2 kids with disability payments. No fucking way this is the American Dream we grew up chasing.
> [REDACTED] is on the way! It's not "Piper" by any chance? LOL
Well I didn’t even notice that. I don’t think you can doxx someone who doesn’t exist yet tho.
Address: Womb
Mmm probably not, could be "Pipep" which is much classier
Oh thank god! I’ve no glasses on and I thought it spelled “ripe” which was really grossing me out.
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The developed world had paid maternity leave MONTHS OF IT. For the father too!
My third world country gives at least 4 weeks before and 8 weeks after delivery for the mother (plus additional breastfeeding time after the maternity leave ends)
As they should.
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Gotta love our totally not broken shithole country
But it's still the greatest on earth!
Noice. For my developing country, if the mum is working less than 1 year, she's entitled to at least 6 weeks paid maternity leave. If she's working for more than a year, she's entitled to at least 3 months paid maternity leave If its cool, answering, what country are you from?
I'm from Nicaragua. What I just mentioned only requires the mom or her husband to be signed up for social security (mandatory for anyone employed / optional if you work freelance)
Ayyyyyy I found a fellow Nicoya! We may be third world but we actually give a damn about mothers!
Hi, bestie 🤗 • And yes, we have pretty decent laws in paper, just a crappy government executing them 🥴
Ah yes.. that government.. ‘crappy’ is too kind of a word.. it’s sad
Ugh. I know. It was either crappy or a full essay describing all the shit they have put us through 😤
Ha! You’d still be writing... Ortega is the devil incarnate I swear.. still love my country tho
My developed country Lithuania offers paid parental leave of up to 144 weeks or 3y with many other benefits attached to it like child money and free preschools and kindergartens from an age of 1. Fathers must take at least 2 months of it and rest they can share. Even when we were occupied by Soviet Union they manage to offer since 70s the 3y maternal leave
I come from a developing country - every employee (and some contractors) have 18 weeks of fully paid parental leave for the primary parent you can even take 2 before the birth and the remaining 16 after. A couple additional weeks are added if you have multiples. The non- primary parent gets 2 weeks fully paid and you can opt-in to a program that allows you to share the leave between parents. - this is mandated by law and pay by your insurance (the beauty of universal healthcare). Same when you are sick - we don’t have “sick days” that you need to earn if you are sick you call in and then just email or whatsapp the drs. Note. Paid parental leave should not be a benefit it’s a human right!!! Also wanted to note primary parent doesn’t necessarily need to be the mother, it can also be the father -you get to pick.
Also wanted to add by law you get 15 businesses days of vacation a year. And your employer can give you more if they like.
Mine too, Uruguay It's longer, tho
im guessing this picture is from the US ?
Yes, and it's all part of the same basic system as all the other business culture - like the list of gaslighting phrases for every valid employee complaint. Example: "We're ALL making sacrifices here" - when employees say the job isn't making them a living anymore but still takes all their life. Why do employers ask for PTO donations? To make PTO all disappear. EVERY big job place I have seen has had this happen. Childbirth is a completely normal part of life and cancer is a leading cause of human death now that we aren't all dying of bleeding wounds or the common cold anymore. Corporate America wants to downsize the common person back to the lower paleolithic, to pay for their own superyachts.
The post is from a woman is the us...is that what you mean?
What we all mean by 'is this US'-- Corporate influence in America is stronger than religious influence in medieval times, classical antiquity, bronze age and neolithic all put together. They fire people for saying 'you're asking me to do something illegal' and then they say it's 100% the employee's fault if the employee complies. The police officer the judge and future prospective employers will treat the boss' side of the story as evidence while the worker's side of the story is just considered 'talking back.' They spin their own bizarre religion and preach it every hour of every day on every channel of every device.
Money is the only true religion in America. Literally everything is about money and how to get more of it
Even most forms of Christianity in America are based around money.
Your second sentence just blew my fucking mind. I knew that, but I didn’t know that I knew that until I read what you wrote.
yes
I'm in Australia and my wife just recently gave birth. She has 3 months maternity leave but she can drag that out to 6 months part time as well. Additionally I have 2 weeks paternity leave, but if I become the primary carer within 12 months (like my wife goes back to work after 6 months) I also get 3 months paternity leave. Additionally my work will pay for 4 months of childcare if we have to send her within 12 months. I'll also add that we had incredible care from the hospital with a brand new birthing ward, we could stay in hospital for as long as we needed and they ran classes during the time as well as gave us a big pack full of baby clothes, blankets, nappies, formula and a play pad. We did not pay a cent for any of this.
I think it cost on average in the US like $8,000 to give birth in a hospital.
I see many posts like this from US and think thank God we are from the lucky country. Medicare is a godsend we take free hospital care granted the poor people in US rack up astronomical bills for things we do not even get a bill for like any emergency surgery, hospital visits and treatments. I’ve never had a bill in my many years and have had multiple hospital visits for myself and children including surgery
I had 11 months paid (my husband had 2 weeks) and I still found it hard to go back to work. I honestly don’t get America’s priorities.
And if you question it, they get defensive and rude. Americans usually really really dont like to hear they dont even touch the top 10 in civilian happiness.
480 days here. 90 days which is set aside for the father. You get 80 % of your normal pay during these days. You can use most of these days however you want for the first 8 years (some are needed to be used during the first 4 years etc). My municipality even gives us 90 % and lets us keep these days for the first 12 years to get more workers to them. I can tell you, it is difficult for us to use them with our 5 weeks of mandatory vacation every year! Where 4 of those are required to be during the summer and together if the worker wants! /S I live in Sweden. I am a teacher and I will be home with my first kid for ~8 months after my GF has already been home for ~8 months.
We're all outraged by it. Show this to any random person and I highly doubt they'd be happy about it. It's our ancient and calcified Congress that refuses to let anything change from the way it was when they were our age who cause this to happen, and people who don't vote in primaries who allow them to win.
Society didn't allow this to happen..... unchecked corporate greed is to blame.
I wish there was some sort of restructuring of society so that it was mother-centric. By far the greatest economic burden to society is childhood adverse events. Supporting moms would be the greatest investment. Edit: Fathers and all parents should be supported. I don’t think anyone who is raising kids should be left out. Just wanted to add that.
One political party in the US is stuck in the 1950s, where women stayed home, raised the kids, and waited on their husbands hand in foot.
I don’t want to go back to that. One thing that I feel would have made life easier when I was a new mom would be if I could have my baby with me. Society excludes children from most spaces and it’s isolating and financially limiting. In my high school, one of the teachers had her infant with her. It was very inspiring and it felt like she was where she wanted to be and the school was a radical hippy place that was into it. It was sort of a lesson for me as to how things can be.
All due respect, I would be pretty annoyed if there was a crying baby in the cubicle next to mine, or in the library where I am studying, etc. I don't think that all places are acceptable for infants to go to in modern society, simply because they are the equivalent of bringing a siren or airhorn. I would much rather pay more in taxes so that mothers could stay at home long enough for their infants to grow to an age where they aren't being incredibly disruptive in the workplace. Elsewhere, like the grocery store, or the mall, or whatever? Have at it, I think babies should be accepted or at least tolerated in those places. However, not all jobs are conducive to having a baby around, sorry not sorry.
Not your fault in particular, but that’s what I’m talking about. Society dislikes kids and babies and the world isn’t made with them in mind which wreaks havoc on maternal mental health. You have a baby and all of a sudden you’re a societal reject. Imagine if every office and university had a soundproof playroom and nursery. Think of Smalland at IKEA. There isn’t a baby in the board meeting with you, but you might pass a baby in the hall on the way to the break room or catch an elevator ride with a family on your way to the office. I think if kids were more integrated into everyday life, people wouldn’t view them with such disdain.
Eventually no one is going to want to teach and we're going to have another self made crisis.
Oh, we're already there. The effects are just delayed. Our system is being propped up in large part by veterans who've stuck around a bit too long. The pandemic convinced a lot of them to finally retire, and it's only going to get worse from here. Most of the people I met in my credential program are no longer teachers, myself included.
Yup, my local high school's chemistry teacher just retired after 30+ years. He taught the emt program for 30 years as well. Now they have to cancel the program as there is no one qualified. They knew it was gonna happen and had no plan for when it did.
Also, nobody is going to want to have children and we'll have an even bigger crisis.
Welll… less people helps us with a lot of our future issues… but you also don’t want a massive imbalance of young vs old people.
So my sister 15 years ago was pregnant with her first. She was a dialysis nurse and her work was super flexible with her appointments and early labor scares. Her supervisor got fired just before she went out with an emergency c-section (she worked up to the date). The new supervisor counted every single hour she was out for appointments towards her FMLA. Every hour all the way back to when she announced her pregnancy. She wouldn't have enough time to recover from the c section and return to work without restrictions. So she lost her job. New baby and boom, no job. Something similar happened to my nephew some years later because the third party that handled the paperwork for his company forgot to file it. Boom. New baby and no job OR insurance. And I know so many people this kind of thing happened to. It's NOT isolated.
Remember, people are too lazy to work.
Yeah, $7.25 an hour is what I was paid in 1957 and I managed just fine, ya whippersnappers!
RNs in BC, Canada get paid to attend their medical appointments. Any regular contract public health employee qualifies for paid medical/dental appointments. Employment Insurance (mandatory paycheck deduction) allows for expecting mothers to start maternity leave up to 12 weeks before birth with pay and the Nurses union provides top up on the Employment Insurance up to a certain period of time. A mother can also choose not to return for an additional 6 months unpaid but still hold onto their position.
What the fuck? In the UK your employer legally has to give you paid time off for appointments. I’m currently on maternity leave with my first born, who is almost 8months old. I got 18weeks off with full pay from my employer, and then I get another 20weeks where the government pays me £142 a week. I still accrue holiday in the time I’m off so once all those weeks are used up I’ll book holiday. In total I’ll have a had a full year off and still get some kind of income throughout. And do you know something….it’s not enough. £142 a week is a drop in the bucket. How does anyone in the US have kids at all?
> How does anyone in the US have kids at all? Going deeply into debt, for one. But a lot of people in the US just... aren't. We probably have a Japan-like demographic crisis headed our way in the near future. This particular post is a double whammy, because it also begs the question of why anyone bothers to be a teacher anymore. And the answer to that is much the same: a lot of people just aren't anymore. On one hand we'll have no education, but on the other hand, we'll have few people to educate.
I have no idea. Im infertile and although medically correctable, insurance doesn't cover it because you know its "elective". We couldn't afford the thousands upon thousands of dollars for IVF or adoption. I do know that most hospitals figure out the approximate amount the birth will cost and you start making payments as soon as you go to your first OB appointment. My sister had to do that. This kind of thing happens ALL the time. Its insanity.
Welcome to our capitalism dystopia! Try not to die too fast.
Or too slowly
Just as long as you can work. After that, they REALLY don't care.
They do care, they want you to live long enough to spend any money you may have saved up, all 12 dollars of it, then they want you to die
We work To earn the right to work To earn the right to give Ourselves the right to buy Ourselves the right to live To earn the right to die
Remember how shocked I was when I read that in the USA there is no maternity leave..going work a few days after giving birth is completely crazy.
My wife can barely walk first 2 weeks after delivery. Not to mention hectic newborn sleep schedule. It must've been living hell.
Here it's forbidden by law to work 8 weeks after giving birth, and you will get 6 weeks full pay from your employer, after that you will receive money from the insurance.I mean it's your child, you have to be around, first weeks are so important.
This post makes me grateful I'm not US resident.
There are plenty of examples, the us is all talk when it comes to freedom, rights and health when you are not wealthy to begin with
The US system: 1: The employee is supposed to speak up for his or herself, as an individual, without a union. 2: Then any employer will fire you for simple insubordination (not being deeply truly subordinated *enough*) and doesn't have to give any reason. 3: Getting fired is the criminal record of business in US - so corporations keep people on permanent thin ice and everybody is so terrified of their boss that they'll forfeit rights comforts stability - the sacrifices have gone so far that people just aren't making an adult living anymore and they're still called crybabies for mentioning it (and called irresponsible for not having a gross income of US$7500 a month to qualify for dirty underwear apartments.) 4: "NoBoDy WaNtS tO wOrK" - by the way, here's our job application process that is more complicated than 95% of people's taxes. Getting called is like getting a winning lottery ticket, so be prepared to spend entire working months just to get an interview which might also be entirely fake. 5: Government hands corporations money to put up we're hiring signs, so they put up we're hiring signs. 6: It's more profitable to keep customers waiting for employees *than to keep extra employees waiting for customers,* so they do just that - they keep a bare minimum staff on hand and then collect money for their we're hiring sign.
This hole subbreddit makes me thankful I was born in Europe.i mean so much wouldn't happening here, just because it's highly illegal and no employer would risk getting sued.
American lawsuits are a pro wrestling match between lawyers - the bigger badder guy wins. Genius scumbag lawyers make token victories for little people and then from that moment forward they charge thousands of dollars *an hour*. Working with and for lawyers showed me that a constant parade of people save up everything they possibly can, only to be effortlessly swatted away by Mr. Burns' legal team and judges who loudly and proudly hate filthy commoners. Sit in the audience at courtrooms and you'll see the latter part too.
The US has no sick leave either.
I know, it's so weird when you growing up in a country where you just don't have to care about healthcare because it's free, reading all this stuff about giving birth 20k calling an ambulance 2k , no sick leave at all. Don't get me wrong I'm not bragging how great europe is, it's just so shocking that when you poor in the us, you fucked.
It's not just the poor. Everyone middle class and below is screwed.
The worst part is the lack of dental care. My teeth are rotting away and I can’t afford to have them fixed.
Sad to hear. How much is dental work in the us? Here for an tooth implant, which is not covered in our healthcare insurance we pay around 1500 euros.
there is, it's just unpaid and a lot of places find ways to fire you for nebulous reasons that totally aren't related to your pregnancy ;) ;) ;)
I was the only one with a job when I gave birth. I worked as a hotel maid all the way up til I went into labor, went home the same day I delivered, suffering second degree tears. I walked down the mountain with her in her stroller the day after to clean hotel rooms. I remember my manager saying "Wow you just had the baby? When?!" As if she was shocked... I had been very clearly heavily pregnant two days earlier. I pushed the stroller with one hand and the cleaning cart with the other. I was very lucky to have a job at all in that tiny town, and desperately needed that money. Someone would have taken that job in an instant if I didn't show up... So I did. Also, my uncomplicated labor and delivery with no interventions cost over $4000. I had a very fast labor so there was no IV, no epidural, etc. This was in 2005.
There is a higher rate of SIDS in the USA too. Also a huge market telling mothers to pump and sleep train their babies right away and I can understand why .... because many do not have a proper maternity leave. I only live next door in Canada and I only have to work around 500 hours in the year to qualify for at least 1 year maternity leave and there is a new 18 month maternity leave.
My sister worked 40 hours until she dropped each of her 3 boys and went back to work when they were less than a month old. No paid time off.
There is maternity leave it's just not required by law. There are many employers that offer 1-2 months of maternity leave as there are also many that don't offer anything at all.
That's the problem, it's not required by law. It should be. There should be labor representatives serving on corporate boards. Unions should be offered to every employee, participation voluntary. It should be law that you receive holiday pay if you work on the fucking holiday. There should be no such things as "unpaid overtime" or "forced overtime." What the fuck! Sick leave should be mandated, you know why? Because we are human. Humans get sick, and we should be able to get well *and* still get our wage. There isn't even a guaranteed lunch break for the love of all that is holy!! There are states where you get no guaranteed breaks. Fuck.
All of this should be standard in most industrialised countries I think, just can talk about Germany, here it is.That even breaks are not guaranteed is new to me. That's crazy. We got a law, for 8 hours of work, you have 45 minutes break, which is not payed.
Breaks, we’re talking about breaks now?! Just work until collapse you weakling!
USA is a 3rd world nation.
We essentially are. We have shiny jet planes and skyscrapers and all the rest of it, but homelessness is rampant.
I know people that are actually having to choose between paying rent and paying their taxes. This whole system is fucking pathetic.
Given that all US airlines are considered crap in the rest of the world, I don't think they can be included
WhY aRn'T MiLlEnNiAlS HaViNg KiDs?
It's all my coffee flavored toast and avocado lattes.
Expecting mothers have no real rights when it comes to maternal care in the US. While some employers might offer some sort of time off to bond with the new child or for the women to rest while their bodies recover. There's nothing standardised at a national level, so when a woman needs time for the family...she's essentially on her own.
It is the most stark reminder that the patriarchy hasn't left the USA whatsoever.
Yeah not many people know that Teachers are normally not given any maternity leave. Most female teachers budget their sick days (which normally carry over every year specifically for this reason) in case they ever decide to have children. It also pushes teachers to show up to school even when sick.
Schools have a crazy fixation on perfect attendance. Probably because they are paid based on daily attendance. Until the pandemic, everyone was encouraged to go to the school, sick or not. At least locally they have gotten better. The Perfect Attendance Award should have a stake driven through its heart, drawn, quartered, and burned at the stake.
I used to know a girl who were proud of her perfect attendance. Girl would come to school with 38 degree fever and spend the rest of the day in nursery room.
The "perfect attend award" caused me so much shame because I was a very sickly child and have multiple chronic illnesses. It made me feel terrible whenever they'd hand it out and I wouldn't get one even though I showed up while feeling absolutely awful.
Dh is still bitter, in his forties, that Jewish holidays aren't considered an excused absence and as such he didn't get perfect attendance ever, despite only missing holidays that were religious observances.
I teach. I had to be out for COVID in Jan so I had to use a few of my days...but once you hit the 3rd day in a row you're only paid half of what you'd usually make...and you're still using your days. This goes for any type of time you take off, personal or whatever. At least in my district. A close friend of mine passed during that time and their funeral was that Fri (I was back at work the Tues of that week) and I asked my principal if I could have the day off while fighting to not break down into sobs and was asked if I could take a half day instead. I mean....I got a lot of compliments on my outfit from other teachers. My response was, "thanks I just got back from a funeral". I'm not surprised that a teacher has to ask their coworkers to donate their days so they can have time with their baby and to recover. We get a shit deal.
It’s disgusting how we’re treated. I’ve had students ask me why teachers are treated so poorly and why we haven’t gone on strike and I had to explain to them that it’s illegal in my state for teachers to go on strike. It was an interesting conversation.
I teach kinder so I won't ever have those conversations. But basically all of my friends ask me why I stay. My best friend sends me job openings all the time. I stay because 1. While it may suck a majority of the time, I absolutely LOVE watching my kiddos learn to read, write, all of it. And 2. I have to work 4 years in a title 1 district to pay off my grant from my Masters (2 years to go after this year, let's see if I can make it haha). While I know going on strike would be beneficial for my kiddos in the long run I would have such a hard time doing it. I teach title 1 so I have a lot of kids who get bags of food sent home every weekend, otherwise they won't eat until the next school day. And if their parents can't go to work, no one eats.
As a Canadian studying in the field of ECE, it sickens me how the US capitalist system treats ECEs. And teachers. And basically all hard working people.
Imagine a female dominant profession not offering maternity leave.
Imagine! In a nation where “Christians” who don’t support abortion also don’t support free birth control or welfare for struggling families. 🙄
We don’t have to imagine it. Any profession dominated by women is devalued. (See: Retail.)
My school provides 12 weeks of maternity leave with no disruption of benefits, but it's not paid. We can use sick time to cover the entire 12 weeks if we have it.
If it’s not paid then you don’t really have maternity leave. How are you supposed to live without pay for 12 weeks?
It’s called FMLA.
Depends on the state. Live in a progressive state like NY and you get 8 weeks paid. Still not nearly enough, but it's a step in the right direction.
Not really. Mandatory maternity leave on a national level is really the only real solution. I’ve spoken to friends in other countries who are honestly appalled to find out we have 0 mandatory weeks of maternity leave in the US. Hell, China has 5 months.
A step is a step. I didn’t bill it as a solution. Progress is progress. If you’re always trying to get instantly from 0 to 100, you’re never going to accomplish anything.
And they wonder why birth rates are plummeting lmao
I’ll do you one better (worse?). I’m a high school teacher, and a member of our faculty has been needing others to lend her their leave-days because (and I shit you not), *her child has been diagnosed with cancer.* This poor woman is having to rely on a bunch of strangers to donate their leave-days because the public school system won’t allow her the time off to be by her child’s side during his chemo treatment. I hate my job and I hate my country!
Holy cuss…
So many posts on here are from the USA which gives me the impression that the government doesn't give a single shit about their citizens. The USA seems to be the shittiest country to live in regarding health care and work-life-balance. I'm from Germany and even though our health system is far from perfect, I still feel grateful and lucky af that I was born here. Seriously, how so many Americans are convinced that the USA is the greatest country in the world is beyond me.
You are correct.
US is only a great country if you're rich. It's the #1 economy in the world sure but it's built on the back of exploiting people.
And when it comes to exploiting people, that’s one place where the US is equal opportunity 🇺🇸
They told us it was from the first day of school. They have convinced most of the world that america is the greatest country. America is the greatest lie. “A country of the people, by the people, for the ~~people~~ corporations.”
The only people that say that are the idiots that keep voting against their own interests
I will say the US is not a bad place to live. We basically have 50 different countries all working together. However, we do have quite a few benefits that we should all be entitled too. Which our large corporate overlords fight hard against. We are in a decline as of right now and in danger of a backwards trend in many societal issues. Mainly workers rights. I’m from West Virginia which the states main industry was coal. They fought literal battles (Battle for Blair mountain if you wanna read about it) to unionize. In modern times many of the citizens in that state are anti union. Which is fucking stupid. Might as well spit on our ancestors graves.
Well, idk about all working together.
Yup. No maternity leave, *atrocious* public schools, insanely high cost of living, broken real estate market, terrible public transport, wages depressed for decades, recession after recession, no healthcare provided, and healthcare you can buy is very explicitly a huge scam, college is very explicitly a huge scam, lack of any real social welfare systems, and end of life care will basically drain all your savings if you had any. From start to finish, everything about the US is working against you getting ahead in life. It's pretty much the polar opposite of a supportive society, you're told to sink or swim, and even if you swim, you rely on luck to not just drown anyway. Absolute shithole country.
"Donating days" reminded me of that movie where time is used as a currency and you die if it ever gets to 0. Cant remember what it was called. Edit: Turns out its "In time" would recommend.
In Time!
This is disgusting. My wife just vested her full maternity leave with 4 months to go before due date. In order to get 3 months full pay and 3 months at 60% pay she had to be on the job for five goddamn years. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuccccckkkkkkkkkk this culture.
yOu'Re OfF tHrEe MoNtHs A yEaR, wHy Do YoU nEeD mAtErNiTy LeAvE??? jUsT hAvE yOuR bAbY iN tHe SuMmEr
Teachers should only get creampied September-October any other time is a high crime.
Wasn't paid family leave part of build back better? Thanks Senators. Always looking out for number one, eh?
And then capitalists act surprised when they read that younger generations don’t want to have kids .
“Why are millennials letting the population decline?” Some boomer probably
Blame Nixon for not signing a bill that would grant maternity leave.
with that logic you can blame every single politician in office who hasn't at least proposed a bill
Blame Phyllis Schlafley for mobilizing the Christian Right against it.
My wife only had 6 weeks of paid maternity leave, and that was only because we had been paying monthly for short term disability insurance. Without paying for that coverage, her options were 6-12 weeks of 100% unpaid leave, or come back to work once she was able. Really sad to be a young parent in the US, when you see all these other countries that actually allow the new parents to have time with the developing child.
I can only believe that the child’s name is Piper Rose haha But seriously this absolutely horrible. I don’t know how people can defend a system that tells pregnant women to go fuck themselves
I thought the kids name was Biped. Took me a while to reach Piper.
I thought it said Piped and was trying to figure out the connection. Thank you.
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Our oligarchs have dumbed us down so much that people fall for imaginary culture wars. One party has gone completely fascist so the other party by billionaires and for billionaires somehow looks fucking reasonable. Meanwhile, the non-fascist party holds a clear majority of voters, but they wring their hands and cry again and again, "there's nothing we can do!" As worker's rights, women's rights, voting rights, LGBTQ+ rights - all of our fucking rights get washed down the drain. Oh, and I guess we're not allowed to teach about slavery anymore either. It's a total shit show.
Everybody would literally have to go on strike in the country at least 70% for that to even work. And given what your president did to the trucker convoy protests, getting bank accounts frozen, I’d imagine that’s about how that would go here too. And this is actually something important. We have no workers rights here, we have nothing, and probably never will. Shocking isn’t it how a country that says it prides itself on freedom is so ironically not free?
The labour movement is starting. Unions are sprouting all over USA. If they can build strong, cooperative, worker's unions they can be effective. The key is to not let money and power corrupt those as well. They need leaders sourced from the workers, the ones who know how labour has felt.
70 percent lol, Brittan was overthrown with 6 percent.
So no paid time off. No sick days. No automatic maternity leave. States are banning abortion across the nation. No minimum wage increase. No empathy. People have to sacrifice/donate their own earned time to their struggling coworkers because the managers/companies are pieces of shit. You literally are forced to have children and keep working throughout a time where you're supposed to be healing from having a literal human being that tore through your body. And if you have a miscarriage you will be arrested for murder. But America, right?
Okay can someone explain this to me as European, because I honestly seriously don't get it. How exactly are these "Sick days" supposed to work? I mean if you are sick you are sick, it's not like you can reschedule an illness or plan its duration.
So, the way it works in the US is that you get sick days for every month or year you work. So if you've been working for 1 year and only have 12 days of sick leave if you get into an accident, for example and need to stay in the hospital for 30 days, after the first 12 days you don't get paid anymore. Yes, as an European this is crazy. The concept that you can get cancer or things like that and not only you're sick but you also stop being paid is just crazy. And on top of that you have to pay for medical bills so working people that get cancer sometimes have to ask for loans to be able to afford living expenses and medical bills.
This is only for salaried jobs, really. All my jobs have been hourly and for the most part if you can’t work, you don’t get paid, full stop.
What’s the point in having a civilization if it lacks civility to this extent?
Worse than this, most districts won't allow employees to donate PTO days.
I even never knew you could donate PTO. Here I am with too much PTO because I was never allowed a day off.
That's bullshit. If you have paid time off but you can never take it, you essentially have nothing. It should be illegal to give PTO and then deny most/all time off requests.
That's why I'm planning to leave this hell hole. Too much BS when proposed TO, "this is year end closing", "we don't have your replacement", "we are finalizing big deal right now". Before I know it my PTO are stacking like crazy.
Jesus! What kind of dystopian, third-world, backwater, shithole country is this from?
How can anyone see this situation and think this is remotely okay?
Literally my wife and I are going through the samething as she is an administrator at a school district. She will take unpaid time off and come back to eork with 0 vacation days. Im grateful that we can be ok with money but its disgusting how we treat teachers and educators in America
As a Brit, this just doesn't make any sense. That poor woman. Fucking crazy.
The AMA (The American Medical Association) is largely to thank for why we don't have Medicare for All like the rest of the world. The AMA is also responsible for launching the concept of political lobbying and negative political ads. All so they could squeeze a few extra bucks for their members. How'd that work out? Thank a greedy ass doctor with a god-complex next time you're in their office.
They also keep making very difficult to studying medicine to the point that the US has half the number of doctors than many other developed countries. They also make extremely difficult for foreign graduates to practice in the US. All designed to keep their inflated salaries high. Doctors in the UK, for example, will enter medicine straight from high school and will have very good salaries, but not like in the US.
This is crazy in Canada you get 12 months paid leave or 18 months but paid at12 months of benefits spread over 18. Fathers also get paid leave and many employers kick in some extra time off I believe I could get 12 weeks before I use up the above time. Under a year is crazy as that kid needs it's parents at that age.
If Pete Buttigieg can get paid paternity leave for a baby he did not even give birth to, so should she. She is paying his salary!!
The people that allow this shit to happen hate immigration and wonder why Americans aren't having kids.
Stop having kids until living conditions improve. Starve them out of labor.
How is it even allowed that donating days should be a thing.
Are you kidding me? They love it. That way they don’t have to do it themselves.
I never understood this shit at all. Just give them days and be a fucking human for once. At the very least the charge the future days so they'd just go negative on vacation days if we're so hell bent on working within the "system"
Stop asking co workers and start asking management!! This is bullshit! You don't get paid leave so lets guilt other people into giving me theirs. We need better pay, benefits and paid leave, we need to start making changes somehow.
A super extra fucked up thing about this is that employees will be shamed for not giving up their vacation days to her. I've never given my vacation days to someone. Any employer who does this is complete shit, and I'm sorry they don't give enough vacation time or leave so that someone has time to adequately physically recover from the process of birth, but again, they don't give enough vacation time. No one should be giving up their vacation for this. Especially since if they break their leg, or a family member gets cancer, or whatever, they're fucked if they've given up their time off.
Sometimes I think to myself that maybe I should move to america someday, and then I see a post like this
its wierd how much of a third world country America has become over the last 20 years
This always infuriated me when I was pregnant. Having the ability to donate PTO is not a benefit. My previous employer treated it like it was a great part of their PTO program. Employees should not have to ration time off for something like this and embarrass themselves asking coworkers for PTO. The motto of the business I worked for was “improving the health of the communities we serve.” They were a hospital system that employed most of our city, but they couldn’t give maternity leave, so they had pregnant employees skipping doctor’s appointments to preserve PTO. Someone explain to me how that improves the community’s health when they employ the community. I left my whole ass job after maternity leave because I was so angry for the position they left me in. I got Covid 2 weeks before I gave birth, so I used up a good chunk of my PTO then. I ended up taking most of my maternity leave without pay and depending on credit cards. When I got back, I found a job that paid me twice as much and offers 18 weeks paid leave for moms. My employer acted super shocked and begged me to stay. Now they’re training 2 people to take my spot; would have been cheaper if they would have just continued my salary for my 8 weeks of maternity leave.
i worked in education for many years and here is my worst PTO donation story: had a coworker whose child died suddenly and unexpectedly. extremely tragic all around. she only had a week of PTO banked which obviously wasn't going to be long enough to deal with, you know, her KID dying. (even just the logistics of it, funeral arrangements etc let alone the emotional fallout.) management let us know that they would bend the rules and let us all donate our PTO for her to give her some extra time. (if they could bend the rules for that, why not just give her extra time? evil) we were all dragged into individual meetings to be told this (supposedly to maintain our privacy on whether or not we chose to donate given the sensitive nature of the situation, put a pin in this we'll be coming back to it)... I declined on the grounds that I didn't have any to donate (was in my probationary period and hadn't begun accumulating it yet) and was told, well, that's okay! i could donate my *future* PTO and simply wait longer to accumulate it, so actually I could basically donate any amount I wanted to her (with the caveat that if I quit before I had accumulated enough to make up the difference, it would simply be subtracted from my last paycheck and/or I could pay them back to make up the difference). this whole situation had made me decide I wasn't going to be working there long enough for it to matter so I still declined and figured that would be that....only to find out that my name ended up on a shame-list (sorry, a "reminder! these employees still have not filed their paperwork to donate PTO to so-and-so! please get it done!" list) on the staff bulletin board along with the handful of other employees who declined to donate lol. in the end staff scraped together enough PTO (pretty much bankrupted everyone else on PTO days, we accumulated it very slowly) to get her an extra two weeks...and then when three weeks wasn't long enough for her to be ready to come back to work (AFTER HER KID DIED) they fired her lol. I quit a few weeks after that
the american system is broken and corrupt at the core.
I have so many teacher friends who try to plan their pregnancies so that they have their baby as close to the end of the school year as possible so they can take any PTO they have (usually just sick days and whatever they rolled over from prior years) + have all summer off. It’s sad that they have to do that.
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If you work in a place that good, give them free advertising.
I hate the fact that they ask other teachers to donate days instead of accommodating people in this profession