With the White House and big companies like Spotify and Amazon on board, paid parental leave is on the rise in the U.S. — unless you’re a low-wage or contract worker.
Mark Zuckerberg / Via facebook.com
Mark Zuckerberg and his wife are picking out their favorite childhood toys and books, and "every day things are getting a little more real," the Facebook founder wrote in a post Friday. With a daughter on the way, Zuckerberg announced he'll be taking two months of parental leave, noting studies that show "when working parents take time to be with their newborns, outcomes are better for the children and families."
Most new dads are not entitled to that kind of leave, White House Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett told staff at Spotify's New York office a day before Zuckerberg's announcement. America, she said, is the only developed country without a law guaranteeing time off for employees who have children.
The visit to Spotify on Thursday came as the Swedish company announced all of its employees, regardless of gender, will be given six months of paid parental leave when they have kids. Spearheaded by Chief Human Resources Officer Katarina Berg, the new policy also includes a flexible time-off policy for the month employees return to work.
"If you want to compete effectively, then the case I think you can make to your peers is, this is a very effective tool that will help you," Jarrett said. "Don't look at it as a cost. Look at it as an investment."
Spotify's 1,600 full-time workers, based in 28 offices around the world, will be covered by the policy right away; contract workers, of which a Spotify spokesperson said there are relatively few, will not receive these benefits.
Beyond Spotify, tech companies including Netflix, Microsoft, Adobe, Facebook, and Amazon have announced expanded paid leave programs in recent months. Simultaneously, both the White House and the Department of Labor have been pushing a platform for mandating more generous parental leave. But while it's standard in Silicon Valley to shower corporate employees with generous compensation and perks, those policies rarely trickle down to low-wage workers at the same businesses, and paid leave is no exception.
Like Spotify, many of the tech companies that have publicly announced increased support for new parents did not extend the policy to contractors. But while Spotify's workforce is almost entirely full-time employees, other companies have left a significant portion of their labor force hanging. Contractors sorting packages at an Amazon distribution center or stuffing red envelopes with DVDs at a Netflix warehouse are out of luck for now.
Peter Macdiarmid / Getty Images
While contract workers at Amazon still won't receive paid leave under the company's new policy, it has made strides toward ensuring that at least some of its lower-wage workers see some benefits. Nestled in the new Amazon announcement on paid leave for fathers in October was a new category of covered workers: more than 100,000 warehouse and customer service workers who will receive the benefit for the first time.
This move to cover both salaried and hourly workers (though not part-time or temporary employees) makes Amazon a tech outlier when it comes to paid leave. New birth or adoptive parents who have worked for the company for more than a year will now receive six weeks of paid leave, and new birth mothers may now take up to 20 weeks off, including four weeks prior to giving birth.
The company acknowledged the policy update came in response to employee feedback and as part of an effort to stay competitive as more tech companies offer more generous leave, as the Wall Street Journal first reported.
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