Paid Time Off MattersA (slow) progress report

Starting to read Beaten Down, Worked Up, by Steven Greenhouse

Beaten Down, Worked Up, the Past, Present and Future of American Labor is the just published book by Steven Greenhouse, former labor Journalist for the New York Times. Interestingly on pages 8, 9, he makes the same remarks as Melinda Gates about the lack of paid leave in the US, but the main difference is that he links this situation to the decline of the unionization, while (if I remember correctly) Melinda does not even mention the word union. She definitely sees the importance for women to 'organize' (mostly in far away countries) but not as workers unions (except in the case of sex workers in India?) but even then not as a right within a corporate environment. As for Steven, Microsoft is absent from his index... Different blindspots?

From Melinda's book:

Page 234 and following: Section titled "A workplace compatible with family life'

"We have to create a workplace that is compatible with family life. This requires support from the top, perhaps with a push from below."

"Perhaps with a push from below'? 

And how would this eventual "push from below" happen? who would take this initiative to get the attention of the omnipotent 'top'?

Reading 'The Moment of Lift', by Melinda Gates.

I just finished reading 'The Moment of Lift, How Empowering Women Changes the World', by Melinda Gates. I'll point out here the parts that I found especially interesting as they relate to paid leave. I know there are many other aspects of the book that are worth taking in and commenting about but I want to focus on what she writes about paid leaves, who are the people (mostly women organizing to obtain changes) and how it relates to my own experience as a temp with a Microsoft's contractor trying to obtain paid leave, as described in 'The Other Microsoft" and this blog.