Ensuring Digital Signature Lawfulness for Pregnancy Leave Policy in United States

How to eSign a document: digital signature lawfulness for Pregnancy Leave Policy in United States

so you live here and you're having a baby congratulations here's some more good news if you're employed there's a good chance you'll get paid time off to take care of your new bundle of joy and you'll probably get to go back to your old job when that leave is over 95.6 of earth's population lives in countries where at least one parent gets this time so your odds are looking pretty good but if you're part of the other 4.4 percent well you get nothing you might get time off but it almost certainly won't be paid that's if you live on this small island any of these tiny islands or in this gigantic economic powerhouse whose 2020 gdp was six trillion dollars more than second place china to be fair nine states and washington dc have passed their own paid leave laws since 2002 but federally and i can be very brief with the united states we have nothing you've probably heard this before there's no end to coverage on the subject just us and papua new guinea if you don't know as of right now the united states is only one of five countries without guaranteed paid family leave 88 of working mothers will not get one minute of paid leave but why is it this way the us is just as wealthy and developed as these countries and operates with similar governmental structures so what gives [Music] most countries have some combination of maternity leave paternity leave and parental leave which is for either parent after individual leave ends provisions vary for lgbtq and other non-traditional parents here's how it works in practice let's compare the us to none of these it's a media favorite to compare social policies in the u.s to those of nordic countries which are extremely generous in comparison but they have very different social and economic structures from the us instead let's compare to similar nations the united kingdom and canada a pregnant person in the uk can take 39 weeks with about 30 of their average weekly pay a pregnant canadian can take a total of 51 weeks at about 50 of their average wage in each country these payments are capped at a certain amount taxes cover the cost though uk employers pay up front the government typically reimburses the vast majority finally both people are entitled to return to their old jobs or at least similar ones sounds pretty good not finland or sweden good but good but in the u.s then i can be very brief with the united states we have nothing the 1993 family and medical leave act entitles new parents to 12 weeks of job-protected leave without pay the bright side is that this act provides the same leave for a major illness or injury or to care for a relative that's the family and medical part the downside is that the caveats of the bill mean it only covers about 56 of the workforce [Music] now let's return to the y countries in the industrial world which was primarily north america and europe really began paying attention to this issue at all in the last third of the 19th century nations needed women to both work and birth future workers which gave women unprecedented bargaining power most european states passed some form of unpaid leave by the end of the 19th century but in the u.s the availability of cheap labor due to the echoes of slavery rendered female labor less necessary slavery of course had been abolished but sharecropping and other forms of more or less indentured labor kept a servile black workforce in place back in europe the movement for more maternity benefits got a major boost from world war one to make a long story short when millions of men went to fight in the trenches of world war one millions of women staffed the jobs they left behind in france husky mademoiselles handled the wings like toys and when many of those men came back injured or not at all working women gained bargaining power europe was much more destroyed physically that need for physical rebuilding and sort of this push for all hands on deck to rebuild and so more women remained in the workforce largely out of necessity activists lobbied for 12 weeks of paid leave and while countries didn't immediately comply the stage was set for future reforms especially when world war ii left europe even more battered just a few decades later but in the u.s the lack of physical destruction and the comparably small number of deaths again rendered female labor a little less necessary in the united states after world war ii the men came back and the idea was largely okay thanks women we really appreciate what you did while we were gone and now we're going to take our jobs back now you may be asking yourself what about canada it's not like the axis forces stomped all over the great white north so how'd they get paid leave that difference largely comes down to the priorities of feminist movements while canadian feminists included paid leave in their activism american feminists tended to prioritize other issues like reproductive rights workplace rights and passing the equal rights amendment [Music] between world war ii and the late 1980s most wealthy nations passed maternity leaves with job protection and pay but the u.s lagged behind representative patricia schroeder of colorado sponsored the first paid leave bill in 1984 but it languished under the reagan administration it was reintroduced twice and vetoed twice in the bush years despite enormous popularity among the public he didn't want to draw a lot of attention to the fact he was vetoing it so he put out some written statements that just said uh i'm a big fan of family leave i think we should have uh family leave but i don't think it's the government's place to do it activists used this as a cudgel against bush in the 1992 election and bill clinton promised to pass it if he won the family and medical leave act was the first major piece of legislation he signed on february 5th 1993. as much as this was a victory it was only meant to be a first step when asked about the fmla in 2014 representative schroeder said it's still so watered down and everything else that was 20 some odd years ago what have you done since could you please beef it up i don't think there's a capital in a in the world that talks more about family values and does less some progress has been made the trump administration passed 12 weeks of paid parental leave for federal employees in 2019 additionally as of 2020 21 of the workforce had access to paid family leave through their employers but the biggest moves came from individual states starting with california which passed the first paid leave law in 2002. they claim it would be a job killer they claim it will be abused that aunt mary will have a hangnail and somebody will want to take off from work to take care of her this is eileen applebaum she studied the effects of california's law and found that 91 percent of businesses reported either no effect or a positive effect on profitability it did not reduce productivity it did not reduce profitability it increased morale it reduced turnover why this works is pretty simple firstly it's funded through a small tax amounting to about one percent of a worker's first 118 thousand dollars in earnings and because it's spread out over the entire workforce and because workers do not take advantage of it the expenses are quite low secondly it reduces turnover which is one of the most expensive parts of running a business i remember talking to a top executive at a california i.t company and he said to us well you know i've been in many many meetings and i have never heard anyone say well you know if it wasn't for paid family and medical leave in california our share price would be through the roof since california eight more states and dc have passed their own paid leave laws and in march over 250 companies sent a joint letter to congress requesting paid leave at the federal level which may actually happen since both president biden and massachusetts representative richard neal recently proposed paid leave plans who would have thought that two old white guys would be the ones fighting over whose bill is going to get passed i love it and with 82 percent of americans in favor of paid leave is it just a matter of time your ability to take a paid leave should not depend on what state you're working in or on what we call the boss lottery i welcome every big company with deep pockets that provides these benefits to its workers but i don't really think we can require businesses to provide these benefits they're expensive if you do it one business at a time they're cheap if you do it for the workforce of an entire state or an entire country let us know your thoughts in the comments below and be sure to subscribe so you don't miss future videos