U.S. Lags World in Winning Workplaces
Jody Heymann, Alison Earle, Jeffrey Hayes
Harvard University Project on Global Working Families and McGill University Institute for Health and Social Policy, February 2007
The United States lags far behind virtually all wealthy countries with regard to family-oriented workplace policies such as maternity leave, paid sick days and support for breast-feeding, a study by Harvard and McGill University researchers says. The new data comes as politicians and lobbyists wrangle over whether to scale back the existing federal law providing unpaid family leaves or to push new legislation allowing paid leaves.
The study says workplace policies for families in the United States are weaker than those of all high-income countries and many middle- and low-income countries. Notably, it says the U.S. is one of only five countries out of 173 in the survey that does not guarantee some form of paid maternity leave; the others are Lesotho, Liberia, Swaziland and Papua New Guinea.
The study’s lead author, Jody Heymann, founder of the Harvard-based Project on Global Working Families and director of McGill’s Institute for Health and Social Policy, says that more countries are providing the workplace protections that millions of Americans can only dream of.
Among the study’s findings:
According to the study, the U.S. fares comparatively well in some areas – such as guaranteeing significantly higher pay for overtime work and ensuring the right to work for all racial and ethnic groups, regardless of gender, age or disability. Heymann says that the U.S. has been a proud leader in adopting laws that provide for equal opportunity in the workplace, but our work/family protections are among the worst and it's time for a change.
