U.S. Provides Few Guaranteed Benefits To Working Families

Compared with other developed countries, the U.S. relies disproportionately on employers to provide essential benefits to working families and does little to protect the employment rights of younger people, according to a report released by the Project on Global Working Families.

In "The Work, Family, and Equity Index," Harvard School of Public Health researchers Jody Heymann and Alison Earle examined conditions for working families in 168 countries, including the United States. While guaranteeing the rights of the disabled and prohibiting age discrimination, U.S. policy is geared more toward providing supports for the elderly than for the young, the authors concluded.

Virtually all the countries studied (163) were found to offer guaranteed paid maternity leave, but the U.S. was identified as one of five countries not providing this benefit. Researchers noted that the only other industrialized country that does not guarantee paid leave to new mothers, Australia, guarantees a year of unpaid maternity leave. Only those U.S. women whose employers must comply with the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) have a guaranteed right to12 weeks of unpaid leave for family-related reasons.

Whereas 96 countries mandate paid annual leave for workers, the U.S. does not require employers to offer paid annual leave. Of the countries studied, 139 provide paid leave for short- or long-term illnesses, with 117 providing a week or more annually. By contrast, only those American workers covered by the FMLA have a guaranteed right to leave when ill, but the leave is unpaid.

Compared with most other countries, the U.S. imposes relatively few restrictions on the number of hours an employee may work per week. Unlike the U.S., 98 countries require employers to provide a mandatory 24-hour period of rest per week, and 84 countries have laws that fix the maximum length of the work week.

The report further noted that the U.S. is tied with Ecuador and Suriname for 39th place in early childhood care and education enrollment for children between the ages of 3 and 5, with nearly all European countries offering greater pre-school and daycare support for families. In 54 of the countries studied, the school year is more than 20 days longer than in the U.S.

Commenting on their findings, Heymann and Earle said that while some U.S. corporations have implemented family benefits, "voluntary private sector initiatives have not reached the large majority of the nation’s working families." They added that employer-sponsored daycare is available to only one in eight U.S. employees, and employer-sponsored programs providing tax deductions for childcare are available to three in ten workers.

Heymann and Earle observed, however, that "the failure of the private sector to solve the work-family problem should not be surprising. There are many needed services that no one would ever expect companies to supply."

The authors added that, even when it is in the best interests of individual workers and society as a whole, “firms have little incentive to improve working conditions and benefits; in fact, there is often a disincentive if it means the company will have to bear the cost while its competitors may choose not to provide any coverage.” For these reasons, Heymann and Earle asserted, the passage of legislation is necessary to increase the likelihood that families will have access to important work-life benefits.