[Agustus]

The reason to hire someone from the company's perspective is to address work overload. If a start-up hires a tenth employee with amazing skills to address back-end server development, there was a need for back-end server development. When three months in the employee says their wife is having a baby in a month and wants to take the full allotment of FMLA, what is the company's role in this? The employee was the best and hired to address an issue, losing them for three months in a start-up environment would be a mission critical event. The company can A) hire a temp worker to fill in, who will either be let go when the employee comes back or hired on or B) go without a back-end developer, a position that is still mission critical.

The employee is doing best in their interest, but what about the company? A large profit margin company can go out and hire another employee, tech sector is great about this. Low profit margin companies will be unable to address this.

Here we have a situation where well-to-do companies are badgering middle to low profit margin companies into a government move. The European companies are hemorrhaging jobs because of the worker benefit packages (France, Greece, Spain) to China where the wages and benefits are lower. The middle to low companies leave and the barrier to re-entry is made worse by movements like this. Yourapostasy brings up a good point about front loading government tax breaks to encourage children.