{"id":803,"date":"2014-06-26T20:14:56","date_gmt":"2014-06-27T00:14:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jparnell.com\/blog\/?p=803"},"modified":"2014-06-26T20:14:56","modified_gmt":"2014-06-27T00:14:56","slug":"government-mandated-paid-medical-leave","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/?p=803","title":{"rendered":"Government-Mandated Paid Medical Leave?"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Monday the President hosted a Summit on Working Families<\/em>, arguing that the business community is squeezing its workers and is not smart enough to adopt progressive policies without government mandates. One of the prominent issues is paid medical leave. “Many women can’t even get a paid day off to give birth\u2014now that’s a pretty low bar…That, we should be able to take care of.”<\/p>\n

I vigorously appose the President on this issue, which makes me “anti-family” to some. I’m all for family leave; I just don’t think others should be required to pay for it.<\/p>\n

Life is difficult and people need time off for lots of reasons. A newborn is certainly one of them. But if companies are required<\/em> to pay someone who is not working, then that cost must be paid for somewhere else. They could pay everyone less to begin with, cut other benefits, or just raise prices. Regardless, there is no free lunch. The companies are paying for it, so they should be free to create the set of benefits appropriate for their own industries and workers without government intrusion.<\/p>\n

The President claims that paid maternity leave, increased job flexibility, and on-site child care help companies attract and retain the best workers, and ultimately outperform their competitors. This is partially true, but misleading. While there is research suggesting that many companies adopting such programs perform well financially, it depends on the type of company, its workforce, its strategy, and its operating environment. Smart companies consider offering extra benefits to get an competitive edge. One size does not fit all, however, which is precisely why some offer such benefits and others do not.<\/p>\n

If businesses can benefit financially by offering paid leave, flex time, and on-site child care, they will do so without a summit or prodding from the President.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Monday the President hosted a Summit on Working Families, arguing that the business community is squeezing its workers and is not smart enough to adopt progressive policies without government mandates. One of the prominent issues is paid medical leave. “Many women can’t even get a paid day off to give birth\u2014now that’s a pretty […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}