U.S. Last in Maternity Leave Benefits for Federal Employees
The U.S. government doesn’t provide a benefit many on Wall Street take for granted and that the European Union, Japan and Russia require. A bill introduced Feb. 10 to give federal employees four weeks paid time off to care for new children isn’t likely to make it to a vote.
The measure’s probable fate underscores that the U.S. has “the most family-hostile public policy” in the developed world, said Joan Williams, director of the Center for WorkLife Law at theUniversity of California’s Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco.
The U.S. is one of three nations of 181 studied by Harvard and McGill universities that don’t guarantee working mothers leave with compensation, and researchers say it pays the price in lost productivity and health risks for children. The two other countries are Papua New Guineaand Swaziland.
“It’s absurd that we don’t have it,” said Janet Gornick, a professor and director of theLuxembourg Income Study Center at the City University of New York Graduate Center. “Our employment profile no longer looks very good for women overall. The absence of leave is part of the story.”
In the U.S. — where 47 percent of the workforce is female — anyone employed for at least 12 months by a business with a payroll of at least 50 may take 12 unpaid weeks and not lose their jobs under the Family Medical Leave Act. The 1993 law covers about half the workforce, including federal employees.
While maternity leave with pay is a perquisite at Bank of America Corp., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and other big financial institutions, most employers in the U.S. don’t provide the benefit. The number offering fully paid leave fell to 16 percent in 2008 from 27 percent in 1998, according to a study by the New York-based Families and Work Institute.
“If we don’t make motherhood and work compatible, there are long-term economic losses,” said Robert Drago, research director at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research in Washington. They include productivity and earning power lost when women have to interrupt work and costs when employers have to find and train replacements, he said.
