[raz32dust]

3 years sounds extreme. How is a person supposed to run a business with that kind of law? More than 6 months paid leave is too long from a business perspective. The government can tax and guarantee income, but I am not for paid parental leave > 6 months paid by businesses.

[fastbeef]

It's not paid for by businesses, it's paid by the government. It's pays out up to 80% of your income up to a limit and some companies chose to fill in the final gap as well.

[tptacek]

It is paid for by businesses as well, in that every person who takes that leave potentially creates another headcount requirement to fill the gap.

Something between the European standard expectation of a year's leave and the American top-end norm of 12/6 primary/secondary is probably the right answer here.

But this is all a tangent. It is totally unreasonable to criticize Basecamp for policies that are on the high side of normal in the market they operate in.

Really, what's happening is that Basecamp has been forthright about something most companies are deliberately opaque about, and people on message boards are beating them up for it. If their policies were bad, I wouldn't care, but their policies on parental leave are in fact quite good for this market, so this is some bullshit.

[fastbeef]

Just to be clear, this isn't some experimental new thing that the Nordic countries are trying, this has been in place for well over 40 years - It. Works.

Does it create a suboptimal situation at the workplace. Sure, sometimes. However, since the management probably have taken long parental leaves themselves they are very understanding and willing to accommodate the next generation of parents.

In short - troublesome in the short run for certain companies, very beneficial for society as a whole in the long run.

[cpach]

”very beneficial for society as a whole in the long run”

Exactly. Low fertility rates is something that most rich countries struggle with, so to me it does seem like a good idea to invest in good childcare policies.

[tptacek]

Family leave policy isn't the only difference between the Nordic tech employment market and the US's.

[phamilton]

You still have a headcount issue. You need to hire someone to fill in, but can't hire them full time without a full additional job available. Temporary employees result in a lot of wasted job training and investment.

[run4yourlives2]

You don't force businesses to pay directly, you set up a government benefit (payroll tax) that is then used to fund things like mat/pat leaves.

Here in Canada, we get a year that can be divided in different ways. Almost everyone takes it when they have kids, so it's the norm. We pay for it (60% salary to a hard max IIRC) through "Employment Insurance" which is basically a jointly funded payroll tax. Employers can choose to top up if they want. Some do.

Honestly, I can't imagine any other way of getting through that first yet without this set up.

[sarnowski]

In Germany, you can take several years parental leave in which you are protected against being fired. But you only get paid up to 14 months and only up to 60% or ~2000$/month after tax. This gets completely paid by your health insurance (which you have to have) and your enployer doesn't have to pay anything.

[korzun]

> 3 years sounds extreme. How is a person supposed to run a business with that kind of law?

Easy, just take a look at companies in EU outside of Germany. The three years of paid maternity leave is slowly turning into lifetime unemployment for a lot of people. Then we act surprised when the companies are scared of hiring full time and decide to leave and take most of the jobs away with them.

[s73ver]

Business isn't the only thing in the world.

[SwellJoe]

That kind of law would guarantee only quite large business can survive, which is counter-productive if one wants to empower individuals.

I'm pretty much always on the side of workers in any discussion of labor vs. employers...but, there's also small business to consider. I think there's some kind of happy medium to be found, where workers are treated well and small businesses can survive long enough to become somewhat bigger businesses. In the US this is codified into law; rules and regulations that apply to large companies may not apply to smaller mom-and-pop shops.

My company couldn't afford to give an employee more than a few months paid time off; we're a four-person company, and we'd literally run out of money if a quarter of our work wasn't being done for months. On the other hand, if we had a hundred employees, we'd barely notice if one or two people were out for a while.

[mtberatwork]

> That kind of law would guarantee only quite large business can survive, which is counter-productive if one wants to empower individuals.

As others have pointed out, maternity/paternity leave in other Western countries are heavily subsidized through government assistance programs. The costs are not completely shouldered by the business.

[tptacek]

Many of those countries also increasingly have a two-caste system of fully-fledged full-time employees and "temp" workers of various types. If you want Salaryman culture, like they have in Japan, you can set pretty arbitrarily high expectations about leave and job security.

[patio11]

It is my anecdotal impression that this is common in some European countries.

Japanese leave policies are historically pretty simple: the government says you get X weeks, buuuuut X is an inconvenient number for us, so you probably want to look around the room and conform to the practices of your coworkers, which are closer to Y days. Also, for you ladies: remember that the traditional expectation is that you have unlimited maternity leave when you leave formal employment after marrying or having a child. (Some re-enter when the child goes to school. This is largely not compatible with career advancement, with rare exceptions like e.g. translation/interpretation.)

[SwellJoe]

So, why are the same folks trash-talking Basecamp for not offering more paid leave, since the US has no such subsidies? Aren't they based in the US?

I'm not opposed to such subsidies being implemented in the US.

[mtberatwork]

You are right, the trash talk may be a bit misguided since social safety nets that exist in other countries do not really exist in the US. Family leave, universal health care, worker's rights, etc are huge political issues in the US. I'm not originally from the US but have lived here now for a good while and I still am shocked to this day that these kind of societal benefits are not commonplace as they are elsewhere.