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LEAST. SURPRISING. REPORT. EVER. Here's some astonishing news: Corporations, it turns out, are relatively less enamored with legislation that advantages workers than workers are.
After soliciting 15,000 comments about the Family and Medical Leave Act, the Labor Department will issue a report today concluding that the public likes the law, but corporate America has big problems with it.The 14-year-old law gave employees at workplaces with 50 or more workers the right to take up to 12 unpaid weeks a year to cope with their own serious health condition or to care for a newborn, a newly adopted child or a seriously ill spouse, parent or child.If they had any criticism, many workers said, it was that the law does not allow for longer leaves and that it does not provide paid leave, the way many European countries do.One parent wrote: “My daughter was mauled by a dog. I had to take two months of leave. Had F.M.L.A. not been in place, I would have lost my job for sure.”Many businesses complained that the Labor Department’s definition of a serious health condition enabling workers to take leave was unclear and too generous. Many companies also said their operations were hurt when workers with chronic conditions, like asthma or migraine headaches, took frequent leaves.So workers like a law that guarantees them time off for family and medical needs, while corporations don't like a law forces them to give employees time off so they can live their lives, rather than maximize their productivity? I am, quite genuinely, shocked. Next you'll be telling me that the National Association of Manufacturers thinks the “The current system [of union organizing] has been working well for a long time,” despite the fact that unions have dropped to near-nothingness in the workforce. Wait, what? NAM is saying that? Well I'll be damned.--Ezra Klein
