Pregnant people in New York would have 40 hours of paid leave to attend prenatal medical appointments under a new proposal by Gov. Kathy Hochul after the state’s legislative session kicked off this week.
The Democrat’s plan to expand the state’s paid family leave policy, which would need to be approved by the state Legislature, aims to expand access to high-quality prenatal care and prevent maternal and infant deaths in New York, an issue that especially affects low-income and minority communities.
The U.S. infant mortality rate, a measure of how many babies die before they reach their first birthday, is worse than other high-income countries, which experts have attributed to poverty, inadequate prenatal care and other possibilities. The U.S. rate rose 3% in 2022 — the largest increase in two decades, according to a 2023 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Typical fertility rate is a bit under 2, people work about 40 years. This would thus work out to 80 hours of paid sick time over a career . With two weeks standard vacation time, 40 hours a week means 80k hours over a career. If you can’t afford to have an employee subtract 0.1% from their working time over 4 decades you really need to sit down and reevaluate your business. Since you evidently are not capable of staying in business with an employee that is “only” productive 99.9% of the time vs 100%.
Sure you can come up with situations. A very very small company and it is the busy season where it will suck. But even then no one should be that close to the margin.