I had a conversation yesterday with a colleague who’d heard
that Obama was about to sign an Executive order granting paid sick leave. He couldn’t grasp that this wasn’t already
the case. I had to point out that this
order would only benefit people working for companies with federal government contracts. The other 99.5%? Stop coughing and get back to work. This evolved into a discussion about paid
leave in general, which led to maternity leave.
Usually, when this topic comes up I like to describe Lisa’s experience
when Erica was born. At the time, Lisa
was a young vet working in a large equine practice in Lexington, Kentucky and her
pregnancy came smack in the middle of the busy Spring foaling season. Thanks to the cloaking effect of the coveralls
she wore each day she managed to keep the pregnancy secret, at least to all her
clients with a Y chromosome (which was all of them). Erica’s estimated due date was Wednesday, May 10th and sure enough, when Lisa
got home from work that evening, after a
typical day palpating mares and making sure the foals got their colostrum, the
contractions began. We jumped in the car
and following pre-arranged plans, dropped Lindsey off with some friends and
hurried off to the hospital. Ever in a
hurry, Erica arrived about twenty minutes after we got there leaving us with four
nice days together before Lisa returned to work on Monday, visiting her clients to check on the mares and
foals and leaving Erica to be raised by wolves along with Lindsey. Note to people who don’t know us well, the
wolf part is a joke. Everything else is
true. The farm managers, since they hadn’t seen her
all weekend, and she pretty much worked seven days a week, naturally asked
where she’d been. Picture their faces
when she told them she’d had a baby. “ You
found a baby?” “No, I had a baby”. “ A foal?”
“No, a person. A daughter”. “Excuse my French, Ma’am. I mean, Doctor, but you’re shitting me, aren’t
you?” Clearly, this was the first time ever, in the
history of the state of Kentucky, that there’d been a pregnant horse vet, and
they’d missed the whole thing. Damn. Most
likely, they still bring it up from time to time. Anyway, upon hearing this story, my colleague
reacted in typical fashion. He recoiled
in shock, no more so than if I’d told him that we’d subsequently sold Erica and
set about growing another. I offer this story not to imply that this was
typical in the US, only to note that it was legal. Her bosses at the time, who were marginally
less clueless than the farm managers, became aware that she was pregnant in
month six and immediately put her on leave while they considered firing her,
before realizing that this, in fact, would have been illegal. They then allowed her to return to work, after
signing a sheaf of release papers, with
the pregnancy eventually concluding in the long weekend maternity leave
described above. The US is joined by only Papua New Guinea in
the club of countries without any mandated paid maternity leave. For those women working for larger companies,
things look better, but not as much so as you might think. In 2012, Working Mother magazine polled their
“100 Best Companies” to see how it is for such lucky women. http://www.iwpr.org/publications/pubs/maternity-paternity-and-adoption-leave-in-the-united-states-1. The average paid maternity leave was 7.2 weeks with 14%
enjoying more than 12. As they say, in the land of the blind, the
one eyed man… The worldwide average for
paid maternity leave is about 16 weeks.
In Europe, it’s 20. Here in
Switzerland, it’s a miserly 14 weeks at 80% pay up to a ceiling of about
$1000/week, which, if they had a minimum wage here, would be about that
level. Interestingly, in Switzerland it’s illegal to
return to work in the first 8 weeks after birth, something that, as a mandate,
is ridiculous but must reflect the will of the people. As I’ve
mentioned before, nothing happens here without a discussion and vote. As an epilogue to the story of Erica’s birth,
three and a half years later Daniel was born and Lisa’s employers, having seen
the light and combined with her timing (Daniel was born in the foaling off season),
allowed her to bask in the luxury of a full two week maternity leave. Unpaid.
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