Paid Time Off MattersA (slow) progress report

The official NLRB press release about the Browning Ferris Industries decision

Press release posted on the NLRB site. See also the text below.

How Josh Levs got CNN to give paid time off to new dads

We found this inspiring story in Brigid Schulte's Inspired Life blog for the Washington Post. Check his advices at the end of the interview and read his book.

Can this NLRB ruling have implications for Microsoft ?

Can this NLRB ruling have implications for Microsoft? From this NYT article, reprinted in the Seattle Times where local attorney Danielle Franco Malone thinks it could. Could Microsoft be considered a joint employer? See also this NYT Editorial.

Petition to Microsoft: Stop Paid Leave Discrimination

Sign this petition on coworker.org

Why does Momsrising never challenge the CEOs?

Mom's Rising is again making very well the case for paid parental/family leave (see below) but as usual only targets politicians. Why not targeting CEOs who can change their practices right away, right now, without a law, if they feel enough heat from the public? Microsoft is Momsrising neighbor in Bellevue. Why turning a blind eye on their practices?

Microsoft and Martin Luther King Jr Day: do they know or care what MLK stood for?

According to Wikipedia, MLK Day as a paid holiday was originally pushed by the Labor Unions and it took a while for Congress to accept it at the Federal level in 1983 with an effective implementation three years later in 1986. It took therefore 30 years for Microsoft to celebrate MLK day as a paid holiday and only for it's already well to do employees, not for its retail employees nor half its workforce employed via suppliers. One can doubt MLK would have approved of such a biased and discriminatory implementation that excludes the very people MLK was the most concerned about. Microsoft was created in 1976 and saw its first public offering in 1986, the very same year MLK Day started to be implemented. In The Other Microsoft, Philippe Boucher quotes from the famous  1963 MLK's Letter from a Birmingham Jail as an inspiring example to fight against the injustice done against the low income employees: "Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever". Has anybody with Microsoft even read this text before deciding to offer MLK Day as a paid holiday to a fraction of the employees and claiming he is part of Microsoft's culture? 

Why parental leave remains a privilege

Vahauni Vara writes in The New Yorker about the limited extent of the recent decision by Netflix and Microsoft to extend the duration of paid parental leave: they discriminate against their less paid employees and their many supplier's employees. Such a discriminatory approach is especially offensive as both companies can easily afford to extend those benefits to all their workforce. The geeks still have a very long way to go to demonstrate they care about the people working for them.

Microsoft improves paid parental leave and paid holidays for its direct employees: ignoring suppliers employees that widens the gap and inequality

When deciding to improve the fate of its suppliers employees Microsoft could have included paid holidays and parental leave on top of its 'at least 15 days' of paid time off formula. Unfortunately their concern for new parents does not extend to the suppliers employees nor the fact that  if the supplier does not provide paid holidays each day that Microsoft closes its offices constitutes a loss of income for the employees. As far as the least protected employees are concerned, Microsoft decision widens the gap and the inequality: they are going to remain without any paid leave when they have a new child and two more days of paid holidays will mean for them two more days without pay, a significant loss of income.  A sobering perspective considering the number of people involved when it could have been possible for Microsoft to be much more inclusive. It's sad to think the newly added Martin Luther King Day as a paid holiday will represent an extra hardship for all those excluded from this improvement, especially since they are the ones at the bottom of the scale.

How long will it take for Microsoft to develop a culture including really all employees, respecting every employee with a less discriminatory approach? Another century?