maternity leave
kkrisberg | April 18, 2017At Bloomberg BNA, Stephen Lee reports that with fears of deportation looming, undocumented immigrants are becoming afraid to access legal remedies when they’re injured on the job. The article notes that such immigrants are disproportionately employed in hazardous jobs and while they account for just 15 percent of the overall workforce, they account for 18 percent of occupational fatalities. Lee writes:
Sofia, a Mexican fieldworker in Santa Rosa, Calif., has a workers’ compensation case in the works after hurting her arm and shoulder pulling vine roots, requiring surgery. But she says she’s…
kkrisberg | May 24, 2016At San Jose Mercury News, Louis Hansen reports on the “hidden” workforce of foreign workers that helped expand a Fremont plant for car manufacturer Tesla. The story begins with Gregor Lesnik, an unemployed electrician from Slovenia, who, according to his visa application, was supposed to work in South Carolina. Hansen writes:
The companies that arranged his questionable visa instead sent Lesnik to a menial job in Silicon Valley. He earned the equivalent of $5 an hour to expand the plant for one of the world’s most sophisticated companies, Tesla Motors.
Lesnik’s three-month tenure ended a year…
Leaked poll shows business execs overwhelmingly support paid leave, higher wages and fair scheduling
kkrisberg | April 5, 2016You know how opponents of paid sick leave and raising the minimum wage always cite resistance in the business community? Well, in turns out that such resistance might be closer to a marketing gimmick rather than a genuine reflection of employer sentiment.
Yesterday, the Center for Media and Democracy released a leaked internal poll of 1,000 top-level business executives nationwide, many of whom are members of their local or state chambers of commerce. Here’s what the poll, which was commissioned by the Council of State Chambers and conducted by LuntzGlobal, found: 80 percent supported raising…
kkrisberg | September 2, 2015It’s perhaps not surprising that single parents face a higher risk of living in poverty. However, a new study finds that such risk is much higher for single mothers than for single fathers, even when they both have similar jobs and education levels and work the same number of hours.
Recently published in an edition of Gender Issues, the study found that single mothers make significantly less than single fathers. In addition, single mothers seem to be financially penalized for each additional child they have, while income for single fathers remains the same or even increases with each…
lborkowski | May 12, 2014Most of us probably expressed some appreciation yesterday for our mothers. Despite the brunches, flower sales, and media attention lavished on moms each Mother's Day, though, US policy doesn't express as much appreciation for mothers (or fathers) as it should. Jennifer Senior shared this graphic on Twitter:
When Australia passed a new parental leave law in 2010, the US became the only industrialized nation that does not provide paid leave to mothers of newborns. As Senior pointed out in her tweet, Pakistan is more progressive than the US in this regard (mothers there get 12 weeks of paid…