French fathers will now get 28 days of paternity leave

Re:French fathers will now get 28 days of paternity leave by SpicyLemonZest on Monday September 28, 2020 @01:19AM (#24613221)

The problem is smaller employers, which simply can't afford to shoulder the burden of paid maternity leave for 1 of their 10 employees. You can set up a graduated system like the UK has, where all employers have to pay and can reclaim a variable amount. But one way or another, any benefit the government won't foot the bill for is a benefit many parents won't get.

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Re:French fathers will now get 28 days of paternity leave by dleslie on Monday September 28, 2020 @01:35AM (#24613291)

Canada provides EI to those on parental leave; the "top-up" is a common compensation perk that employers offer to women, and rarely to men.

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Re:French fathers will now get 28 days of paternity leave by SpicyLemonZest on Monday September 28, 2020 @09:08AM (#24616223)

Right, but the funding available for such a benefit is limited. If employers were required to offer the top-up to both men and women equally, I expect many companies on the smaller side would have to stop offering it to stay within their budget.

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Re:French fathers will now get 28 days of paternity leave by amyjess on Monday September 28, 2020 @09:12AM (#24616253)

Honestly, so many of the problems in our work culture is caused by small businesses who don't want to play by the rules that I'm okay with just letting them hang.

This is the same argument that's used to justify lack of paid sick leave, lack of protections against discrimination (Title VII only applies to companies with 15 or more people), working people who don't have employer-provided health insurance, etc. Every single abuse a company can visit on its employees is magnified several times by small businesses.

It's time for the government to decide that small businesses not playing by the rules are a net negative for society and just let them go.

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Re:French fathers will now get 28 days of paternity leave by SpicyLemonZest on Monday September 28, 2020 @09:48AM (#24616548)

It's not a matter of willingness to play by the rules. A company with 5 employees is always going to struggle to handle a sudden 20% increase in labor costs, no matter how much its owner has good intentions.

It's certainly consistent to say that everyone should just work for big businesses who can absorb these kinds of costs. But I think we have to acknowledge that this process, where regulations end up building a wall only big businesses can easily climb over, would be called "regulatory capture" in a different context. Government funding really seems to me like the better alternative.

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