#GAReads | How Unions Help Moms Take Maternity Leave
photo credit: Gift Habeshaw on Unsplash (cropped)
“How Unions Help Moms Take Maternity Leave”:
A working woman who is expecting faces a litany of tough questions before giving birth: Can she afford to take maternity leave? Will her employer compensate her if she does? Will the government help stabilize her pay?
Most industrialized countries have laws ensuring that mothers can stay home to care for their newborns without losing pay. But in the United States, the only federal law that protects a new mother’s right to time off is the Family and Medical Leave Act, which guarantees that she will still have a job when she returns from maternity leave, not that she’ll be paid while she’s away.
But because the law applies only to companies of a certain size, a large swath of workers are not covered by the law, and they’re disproportionately low-income.