Council approves paid parental leave for non-union workers

You make good points.

It's frustrating that the Unions generally take a Us vs Them attitude. There rarely seems to be any effort to work for a greater good or acknowledgment that management isn't trying to screw over the workers and the Union not take every workplace change as a direct attack.

I work in the mixed union / non-union shop. Most people are pretty relaxed and know that no one is out for their job. But there are a few notable union members who take every advantage to get out of doing work and are augmentative and everyone suffers. They just want to take and never give. They accuse the non-union managers are conspiring when it isn't the case at all. In the end everyone needs to be so "by the book" that no one is happy. It shouldn't be like that.

In progressive countries their safety net is such that getting fired isn't akin to risking starvation. I wish that in the US it was easier to fire someone but someone without a job didn't need to worry about lacking health insurance or a meal.

But in this case, what you'd be getting isn't compensation rather than money. It's money you wouldn't get otherwise. If you choose to have a kid in America in nearly every situation, you're forgoing pay in order to expand your family (at a time when you probably need more money than ever before!). In some situations, you're forgoing keeping your job (however, that is lessened by the FMLA only SIX years ago!). The rest of the world has decided that this is unacceptable (borderline untenable for maintaining the species).

I get where you're coming from that someone who is never going to have a kid "loses" this benefit. However, this isn't something coming out of someone's salary, like employee's share of health insurance, etc. It's supplemental, when needed, in order to make sure people aren't having to choose solely between having a family and getting paid. It's a human respect issue, not using it doesn't mean you're respected less. It's not like the childless are sitting around saying "Man, Lucy's got it so lucky since she can just have babies and get like half her pay over 12 weeks while staying home. How come I can't have that mini-semi-paid vacation too??" Yeah...AND she's got a baby to take care of until it moves out of the house.

So, I don't see it in the same light as "why can't I get extra pay to forgo benefit X?". It's purely a zeroing-out supplement so there's no actual penalty to choosing childbirth while trying to hold a job. If you're an employee that doesn't choose childbirth, you'll never have to experience that penalty.

I agree that there are times when unions aren't always as willing to shoulder the same onus. I also hate that public unions are a necessity (private unions should be imperative for everyone). *We* are the boss and *we* are the employees in these situations. You'd think *we* wouldn't screw ourselves...but we do (see: No Child Left Behind metrics).

Unfortunately in the same way politicians never lost an election by being too tough on crime, no union boss every lost an election by being too tough on the bosses.