What does this mean? That other employees are going to be expected to give up their own vacation/sick leave to pregnant co-workers? The state is so cheap they aren’t willing to give them their own leave? WTAF.
I don’t know what’s more mind boggling to me, the OP or the fact that you can donate sick days. The fact that you can donate them means they’re finite, what the fuck do you mean you don’t know when you are going to be sick
My company just transitioned to a system where we get 30 days of paid leave annually. Sounds good for an American company, right? But that 30 days includes every category of leave (except parental, which is at least something, but only applies when your child is born.)
So in addition to maybe you want to take a vacation, this “bank” of leave also includes sick days, medical appointments, anything related to your kids after they’re born, jury duty (you’re required by federal law to attend if selected) and everything else. This is completely legal where I live btw.
It is your duty to cough on managers every time you’re encouraged to come in sick.
Pretty much. Leave sharing policies are usually set up such that in some sort of extraordinary medical circumstance, employees can transfer paid leave to one another.
The idea is sorta that if a loved one has a major medical emergency and needs a lot of care for 3 months, other employees can transfer paid leave to help cover gaps. This makes sense as a way to cover edge cases in extreme circumstances, but “is having a child” definitely isn’t such a case.
This makes sense as a way to cover edge cases in extreme circumstances
What would make sense is a law that guarantees extra leave in these edge cases.
For example in Germany, you can call in sick not only when you’re sick but also when your child is.
There is no limit to how many sick days you can take.
(There are measures in place to prevent abuse of the system, of course. And being sick doesn’t protect you from being fired, so you can’t just stay home indefinitely. And the number of people abusing this system are VERY VERY low anyway. Cause most people actually aren’t looking for ways to cheat all the time, and don’t need to be watched over like prisoners.)I’m so happy to life in a country where all sick days are paid. Seems crazy to have to stress about getting paid when you are sick.
The American economy was birthed from chattel slavery so the idea of workers having rights has always been a challenging conceptualization here.
Many CEOs groan when they have to relinquish beyond the bare minimum to their indentured… cherished essential worker bangs pot.
The sane way is having regulation that protects your income and job for a few months
Oh, no, think of the profits!!!
Pregnancy is not an edge case, though.
That’s what they said…
This makes sense as a way to cover edge cases in extreme circumstances, but “is having a child” definitely isn’t such a case.
What’s even more nuts is just a few years ago Arkansas passed a bill making it the second highest starting pay for new teachers.
A lot of places have it set up as “compassion leave”. Usually it’s done by the employee association and they approve it for personal tragedies. If someone’s house burns down, for example.
Time off… if you’re popular.
“Donated sick days”? WTF? Sick days should be a right. Maternity leave should be a right.
FMLA IS a right (albeit crap compared to most of the rest of the civilized world). They just find ways to screw people out of it
In addition to what everyone else has posted, FMLA also has the wonderful caveat of not coming into force until you’ve been at a job for one year. Yay…
For people outside of the US, FMLA is up to three months of unpaid leave where you get the privilege of getting to keep your job and your benefits (though you continue to pay for them while not being paid) if you have a medical justification to be out of work.
For many American women, this is all they have access to for maternity leave. So they power through those three months (caring for a newborn no less) then have to scrap together the cash to put their 4 month old in day care ($15 to $20k annually) while not getting paid for that quarter of the year.
40% of infants are still breast feeding at 12 months. This means a new mom is often trying to find time at work to pump and is providing pumped milk to the daycare to be given to their child while they're working. Health officials consider only 40% to be less than ideal since breastfeeding has immunological and cognitive benefits for infants and remarkably cognitive benefits even for moms later in life. Many American women stop breast feeding at 6 months (the minimum recommended duration) since pumping at work becomes too cumbersome.Around 40 to 45% of women in the US don’t even qualify for FMLA because your employer needs to be large enough (50+ employees) and you need to have worked for them long enough (usually a year) to qualify.
Blue states fill the gap with their own state run programs (still usually only three months, though you get some pay) but if you’re in a red state the choice for many women is 1) have children and enter financial ruin or 2) don’t have children.
America lags behind most advanced economies in this regard and there isn’t any sign of these circumstances improving.
the right to take the time off, not the right to be paid for it.
FMLA? Some kind of US maternity leave?
FMLA is for any kind of family leave (children, parents, even your own medical issues) but there are requirements on how long you are employed at a particular place and how many employees they have there. For most small businesses – they do not qualify. Larger institutions/job places do.
Back when I was a teacher, we could “donate” a number of sick days to a pool that would help other teachers who ended up with long term health issues. And yes, you are correct.
That’s the employer’s responsibility, not yours
I think it’s the government’s responsibility.
Well we also don’t get a lot of kids in Denmark, in spite of very generous parental benefits. But regardless, this news story is crazy dystopian.
Women often have to trade career progression for motherhood. That’s a big ask considering the decades we’ve spent letting neoliberals devalue motherhood and labour in and out of the home.
~20 years ago my wife was mocked at university for wanting to have children. It hasn’t improved much since.
For a moment there I was majorly confused as I read it:
William says Volkswagen teachers who are pregnant, new mothers would have access to donated sick days.
But the Bill is probably not a name here and the Volkswagen is VW not WV.
The grammar of the headline is still trash tho:
The law says some states teachers who are pregnant, new mothers would have access to donated sick days.
West Virginia lol. One of the worst states
You misunderstood it, rewrote it incorrectly and then got mad at yourself.
It’s a bill, not law yet so it’s not correct to call it a law. In the US it’s pretty common to shorten states to some initials (such as FL, NY, CA).
Why so serious? It’s a goof. I’m not from US, I don’t know how a bill is supposed to be different from a law, It’s all rules and shit that governments enforce.
What are “donated sick days” don’t you have maternity leave in the USA?
It’s where they make you beg your coworkers for their own sick leave to be transferred to you, or have HR send out an email blast begging employees to donate their own meager PTO to you, instead of the employer granting an appropriate amount of sick or maternity leave to begin with.
How does that even work? How can you transfer sick days? It’s not like you have a fixed amount of days you are allowed to be sick, right… right?
You generally have a fixed amount of paid sick days per year. Those are what’s being transferred.
That’s fucking insane.
Here, if you’re sick you get sick leave. There is no real limit other than after 2 years of illness you basically go on disability instead of sick leave.
What if your illness takes longer than the amount of days you have, you are just expected to show up at the office in your hospital bed?
You are told after a certain amount of time, if you do not return to work full time, you are laid off/fired and lose your health insurance. By law, they have to offer COBRA health insurance coverage to you but that is like 3X the cost of your insurance while employed. At that point, you apply for state funded health insurance (Medicaid) and are still given a work requirement… 80 hrs a month now unless you can prove disability and it takes at least 2 years to qualify for SSD (Social Security Disability). There are some carve outs… like if you have really bad cancer, there is a Medicaid spend down for treatment, or if you are in kidney failure and need regular hemodialysis.
That’s kinda sick (in the sense of being twisted and cruel)
Americans have maternity leave under the Family Medical Leave Act but it’s a paltry 12 weeks and unpaid.
So for many people, including these teachers, they have the choice of paying your bills or taking care of your kid or begging your coworkers to please give up their vacation days so you can continue to live while having a baby
Like every other third world country.
what
Like you get two hours to recover and they shove you back to work.
That is complicated. First, women who have given birth are eligible for Disability Pay for the first 6 -8 weeks. This is a fraction of their pay and generally does not actually arrive until a month or two later. Some states have paid maternity leave, providing certain conditions. NY state, where I live, provides for paid maternity leave on top of the temporary disability for up to 67% of pay… there is a cap on the income. For 2026, the NYSAWW is $1,833.63, which means the maximum weekly benefit is $1,228.53-- but this is at scale for the employee’s regular pay. This is $51.21 more than the maximum weekly benefit for 2025. There, however, are many states that do not offer anything other than the temporary disability. Some workplaces/employers offer some paid maternity leave as an employee benefit. Many do not but if you work for an employer that has over a certain number of employees, you may be able to get family leave (FMLA) which is generally unpaid but provides job security in name… but At-Will Employment states are free to just fire anyone under specious reasons. States that have banned abortion or severely restricted it offer the least amount of maternity leave benefits, ironically.
Sounds like a beautiful place to start a family in.
Manufactured subjectivity for serfs: “Remember: Your children are very sacred to us until they are born into in this world; then they become slave-meat for degenerate billionaires.”
“Guarantee access to donated leave bank” fuck you. New mothers need a guaranteed six weeks of recovery time and should be able to tag in with their partner for at least a year. Federally guaranteed.
The early years of human life are absolutely crucial for healthy development.
Our state legislatures really don’t care about babies after they are born.
Who is expected to donate these sick days? Are any women not done with children ever going to donate days? Because you might need those for your own pregnancies. And once you have kids, you need all of your sick days because your kids can’t go to daycare or school when they’re sick. If you’re done raising kids, you’re probably old enough for aging related illnesses, you’ll need those days for managing care and prevention (colonoscopy for example). That leaves the younger single folks without children, who inevitably have fewer sick days to start. I never had any sick days when I was teaching part time, and no health insurance either.
I’d donate my sick days right before quitting.
I think it’s fascinating how they keep doing bizarro socialism (your sick days? our sick days), just to avoid making capitalists contribute to society.
It’s more fascinating that we continue to vote for these people or don’t care enough to vote against them.
I live in this state.
These same folks can’t seem to figure out why we’ve had an ever worsening teacher shortage for the last couple of decades or so, btw. (Spoiler alert: It may not solely be due to the fact that everyone who can gets the fuck out of here as soon as humanly possible 🤯)
You couldn’t make this shit up
Should have posted this in nottheonion honestly.
The idea is women should not be working in the first place. Taking all the men jobs like teaching children!
🤡
Thanks for nothing, Elliott Prick.
Also, fuck you.
Land of the free
Free to get fucked so not wrong.
Home of them vs us
Thanks I hate it
