Massachusetts gets it right

[Loren Pechtel]

Which has nothing to do with whether employers should be required to ignore the less work turned out by those on the mommy track.

Employers are limited by what governments allow them to do. Governments will tell them what to do based on what gets those governments re-elected.

In a democracy, the people choose the society they want.

So you think businesses are slaves, to do whatever the government might want?

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It actually takes a man and a woman to make a baby: Biology 101. And both are really equally as capable of caring for one.

Mostly equal. I'm not aware of men that can breastfeed.

An obvious part of the solution to correcting for the "mommy track" experience - and promotability - gap is mandating paternity leave that is comparable to the offered maternity leave.

Earth to JonA: It's not the time off for birth that causes the mommy track effect.

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This will be one that economists study for a few years and see how they go. This one can easily backfire against the people you are trying to help.

A lower wage is a bargaining chip that someone has to compete against someone that has more experience.

If a company thinks they can offer a range of between $50K and $60K for a job then they can make a comparison of someone wanting $50K with 8 years experience compared to $55K with 10 years experience. But if they have to decide one or the other, they are going to look at whether they want the more experience or less experienced and if two people are applying but the one has more experience then they would get the job.

So, they'll offer the 8 year guy $50k and the 10 year guy $55k. I don't see that anyone will be hurt here other than employers who like to lowball.

 

[JonA]

Employers are limited by what governments allow them to do. Governments will tell them what to do based on what gets those governments re-elected.

In a democracy, the people choose the society they want.

In a Constitutional Democracy that respects basic human liberty (the only kind of Democracy with any positive value), the people are very limited in what the can force individuals to do or not do in order to engineer their preferred society.

Tyranny of the majority is no better than tyranny by a single dictator.

I'm not saying this automatically makes it unacceptable to force employers to ignore maternity leave, just that your general claim about "Democracy" is wrong and says nothing about whether a defensible society should allow such coercion.

A countless number of laws and ordinances are designed specifically to coerce people into behavior considered more acceptable by the majority of society.

So either you are wrong or you do not consider any nation ever as containing a "defensible society".

 

[JonA]

Employers are limited by what governments allow them to do. Governments will tell them what to do based on what gets those governments re-elected.

In a democracy, the people choose the society they want.

So you think businesses are slaves, to do whatever the government might want?

No. Which is why I didn't say that.

It actually takes a man and a woman to make a baby: Biology 101. And both are really equally as capable of caring for one.

Mostly equal. I'm not aware of men that can breastfeed.

Children can survive on more than just breastmilk. And for parents that want to stick with breastmilk, mothers can express and store. There are even laws mandating employers provide nursing mothers spaces to do just that.

A father can tend to the physical needs of his children just as well as their mother can.

An obvious part of the solution to correcting for the "mommy track" experience - and promotability - gap is mandating paternity leave that is comparable to the offered maternity leave.

Earth to JonA: It's not the time off for birth that causes the mommy track effect.

Well, what do you believe causes it, then?

Be specific.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

So you think businesses are slaves, to do whatever the government might want?

No. Which is why I didn't say that.

It actually takes a man and a woman to make a baby: Biology 101. And both are really equally as capable of caring for one.

Mostly equal. I'm not aware of men that can breastfeed.

Children can survive on more than just breastmilk. And for parents that want to stick with breastmilk, mothers can express and store. There are even laws mandating employers provide nursing mothers spaces to do just that.

A father can tend to the physical needs of his children just as well as their mother can.

An obvious part of the solution to correcting for the "mommy track" experience - and promotability - gap is mandating paternity leave that is comparable to the offered maternity leave.

Earth to JonA: It's not the time off for birth that causes the mommy track effect.

Well, what do you believe causes it, then?

Be specific.

It's far more a matter of not working long hours while they have children at home, and even taking the preschool years off work entirely.

 

[Deepak]

The difference doesn't come ten years down the road when some bean counter is adding up every employee's time on the job down to the second; it shows up immediately when New Mom comes back to work and her colleagues are all proficient in the software changes deployed during her absence that she must now struggle to learn.

I don't have the data to support a claim either way, but my anecdotal experience is that women take time away from work to raise the children during their early developmental years which would be a larger contributer. If that is the case then what scheme could (or for that matter should) be proposed to counteract the gap?

The scheme I mentioned would help counteract the gap by leveling the loss in experience caused by taking so much time off.

Honestly - it's just not realistic. First, software doesn't change that quickly and software purchasing cycles for business applications are on multiple year contracts. If there is a replatforming that happens, then training employees is part of the purchasing decision and part of the cost of doing business. Once an employee comes back to work they're trained on any software changes just like a new hire would be, or how the other employees were. Unless you have some actual data that shows I'm completely in left-field here I'm skeptical.

What I actually see happening is that women who have children will take time to raise their children in the early developmental years. For those same three kids, overlapping to a degree, you'll see women drop out of the workforce for 5 or 6 years which even in cases of double-digit years of experience can be a significant factor in earning power. Compare 15 vs 20 years experience in a industry for someone who takes time off to raise children vs a single or childless married person, and you'll see a difference in earning power. This isn't bean counting - it's how an actual hiring manager would evaluate a candidate.

To wit, I actually took a 3 month sabbatical between my last job and my current one, and it didn't affect my earning power in the slightest. And I'm in the software industry - so it's not just a business application that I need to know, the competitive landscape is continuing to develop during that time.

 

[Jarhyn]

I see arguments about mother's getting "The Whammy" as I have come to call it. Or breast milk. Or pregnancy.

First, I have a penis, fairly high levels of testosterone, and testes. I'm pretty sure they producea decent amount of sperm, and while I have a mild biological resistance to testosterone, I'd fall roughly under the common conception of what it is to be a 'man'. Three months ago, I adopted a dog as a rescue, and that dog gave me "The Whammy". I experienced what I was able to immediately identify as the effects of a drug. It was, and has continued to be intense. It has effects on my judgement and no matter how much I rationally understand that he is not a person, I cannot, or at least have not yet ever been able to see him as anything but my *son*. So help me if someone took him, hurt him, or abused him so help me I'd be in prison over it. It's been a few months since I checked my sanity at the door. I was never even consulted in this decision. It just happened. I don't see for a moment how it could possibly have made me any less rational on the subject, how this could possibly be stronger. Fathers are just as capable of getting "The Whammy" as a mother is, we get just as crazy, and it absolutely does NOT require biological relatedness. I feel that even adoptive parents ought get childcare leave, regardless of gender. Even with this dog, I've had to take days because it was either go home and take care of my dog or stay at work, get absolutely nothing done, and freak out for 6-8 hours.

As to breast milk, not only are there plenty of alternatives to it, there are plenty of options which enable nursing mothers to not only to pump milk for later so that dad can feed the kids, but there is, additionally, the option to just buy it outright. This is especially important for gay or adoptive parents of newborns, or children of trans persons.

As for pregnancy, most people are more than capable of continuing their responsibilities at work while pregnant. Exceptions to this are generally of the sort where temporary replacement is not a major issue, or where responsibilities can be shuffled around to make things work, and where this is only necessary for a short while, up to maybe 8 months in a person's entire professional career.

In reality, nothing about "the mommy track" is unique to women other than the physical pregnancy, and even then, it's a short time frame and a minor difference

 

[ronburgundy]

In a Constitutional Democracy that respects basic human liberty (the only kind of Democracy with any positive value), the people are very limited in what the can force individuals to do or not do in order to engineer their preferred society.

Tyranny of the majority is no better than tyranny by a single dictator.

I'm not saying this automatically makes it unacceptable to force employers to ignore maternity leave, just that your general claim about "Democracy" is wrong and says nothing about whether a defensible society should allow such coercion.

A countless number of laws and ordinances are designed specifically to coerce people into behavior considered more acceptable by the majority of society.

So either you are wrong or you do not consider any nation ever as containing a "defensible society".

Nothing I said suggested there can't be any laws that coerce behavior based on the will of the majority. What I said is that things like the Constitution and Bill of Rights of the US and that should be in any legit Democracy are designed to greatly limit what the majority can do. That is among THE primary functions of SCOTUS, to determine whether laws passed by the majority and their representatives are allowed. For every existing law, there are hundreds of things the majority would do to coerce individual behavior but cannot due to these limits. Our Constitution give primacy to the rights of individual liberty over the will of the majority. Democracy is secondary to personal liberty. Democracy merely is method determining who crafts the laws. Protections of personal liberty determine what type of laws can be passed and what justifications for them are acceptable (e.g., empirically demonstrated harm to others). The majority can no more simply declare it wants all employers to ignore maternity leave than declare that all people must eat chocolate for breakfast. The former is more acceptable if it can be demonstrated that such a restriction on personal liberty if is vital to public welfare or (even more importantly) somehow harms the personal rights and liberties of other individuals.

You could make such an argument that it meets those standards. My point is that whether the majority wants is neither a neccessary nor sufficient basis for whether it should or would exist in any society with a defensible form of government.

 

[coloradoatheist]

Of course you can have laws that try and coerce behavior, doesn't mean they will work or they won't actually do the opposite. We have strong anti drug laws but that doesn't seem that it has stopped drug use.

 

[ronburgundy]

Of course you can have laws that try and coerce behavior, doesn't mean they will work or they won't actually do the opposite. We have strong anti drug laws but that doesn't seem that it has stopped drug use.

If course you can have such laws, just like you can have full blown fascism. The issue is that we should not have such laws unless a clear compelling concern for public welfare can be shown. Just like we should not have most of the laws surrounding illegal drugs. Federal alcohol prohibition required an amendment to the constitution because such a restriction of behavior was beyond the Constitutional limits on Federal government power, no matter how great of a majority of the people might have supported such a law.

 

[coloradoatheist]

Of course you can have laws that try and coerce behavior, doesn't mean they will work or they won't actually do the opposite. We have strong anti drug laws but that doesn't seem that it has stopped drug use.

If course you can have such laws, just like you can have full blown fascism. The issue is that we should not have such laws unless a clear compelling concern for public welfare can be shown. Just like we should not have most of the laws surrounding illegal drugs. Federal alcohol prohibition required an amendment to the constitution because such a restriction of behavior was beyond the Constitutional limits on Federal government power, no matter how great of a majority of the people might have supported such a law.

I agree with you. However over the last 80 years or so, if its a rule regarding business its been allowed unless it's very small select special cases like abortion.

 

[ronburgundy]

If course you can have such laws, just like you can have full blown fascism. The issue is that we should not have such laws unless a clear compelling concern for public welfare can be shown. Just like we should not have most of the laws surrounding illegal drugs. Federal alcohol prohibition required an amendment to the constitution because such a restriction of behavior was beyond the Constitutional limits on Federal government power, no matter how great of a majority of the people might have supported such a law.

I agree with you. However over the last 80 years or so, if its a rule regarding business its been allowed unless it's very small select special cases like abortion.

The number of restrictions on businesses is a tiny fraction of a fraction of the restrictions that the majority of the population would like to put on them. The legislature is hugely biased against even considering drafting restrictions on business, so the courts only ever even hear about cases where the laws are that tiny fraction of potential restrictions that the legislators thought would stand-up in court.

Also, most business activities are not actually personal private behaviors but rather very public ones that inherently impinge upon other people and on public resources. This is where most pseudo-libertarians go wrong, by trying to equate a person smoking a weed in their house they grew in their back yard to a company that is pulling thousand year old mineral deposits from the earth, putting waste products into the river, and using public roads, infrastructure, and even security and military to help them distribute their goods.

While there are some onerous and unjustified restrictions on businesses that don't protect public welfare, there are far more justifiable restrictions on business that don't exist or are not meaningfully enforced. White collar crimes are by far the most under-prosecuted and the punishments are a joke. In some cases, what are fines should be life in prison if not the death penalty for should be viewed as amounting to serial killing (such as for Corporate heads who oversee the knowing sale of poisonous products marketed as safe). For the most part, laws that shield corporate stakeholders for personal and even criminal prosecution should be eliminated, including any and all funds previously distributed to shareholders being subject to confiscation and redistribution to plantiffs in financial liability suits.





Tag, you're it

 

[coloradoatheist]

I agree with you. However over the last 80 years or so, if its a rule regarding business its been allowed unless it's very small select special cases like abortion.

The number of restrictions on businesses is a tiny fraction of a fraction of the restrictions that the majority of the population would like to put on them. The legislature is hugely biased against even considering drafting restrictions on business, so the courts only ever even hear about cases where the laws are that tiny fraction of potential restrictions that the legislators thought would stand-up in court.

Also, most business activities are not actually personal private behaviors but rather very public ones that inherently impinge upon other people and on public resources. This is where most pseudo-libertarians go wrong, by trying to equate a person smoking a weed in their house they grew in their back yard to a company that is pulling thousand year old mineral deposits from the earth, putting waste products into the river, and using public roads, infrastructure, and even security and military to help them distribute their goods.

While there are some onerous and unjustified restrictions on businesses that don't protect public welfare, there are far more justifiable restrictions on business that don't exist or are not meaningfully enforced. White collar crimes are by far the most under-prosecuted and the punishments are a joke. In some cases, what are fines should be life in prison if not the death penalty for should be viewed as amounting to serial killing (such as for Corporate heads who oversee the knowing sale of poisonous products marketed as safe). For the most part, laws that shield corporate stakeholders for personal and even criminal prosecution should be eliminated, including any and all funds previously distributed to shareholders being subject to confiscation and redistribution to plantiffs in financial liability suits.





Tag, you're it

If people got what they wanted with businesses they would have it so the business would pay them and they wouldn't have to work. That's the issue here too, but that's an aside.

I think the matter that you said is public is very small compared to what the regulations that they have. Look at how many regulations they require if you have 50 employees compared 49.

White collar crimes is going off topic, but the issue is that for many times, they are harder to prove than ordinary crimes.