'When It Comes To Bereavement Leave, The US Is Unspeakably Cruel'
'When It Comes to Bereavement Leave, the US Is Unspeakably Cruel,' Truthout, Julianne Tveten, Dec. 26, 2019. Excerpts:
- No Right to Bereavement Leave: Christensen’s ordeal offers a glimpse into the state of bereavement leave for workers in the United States.
Bereavement leave isn’t federally mandated for any workers; thus, it’s largely a matter of whether employers choose to provide it. According to the Department of Labor, the Fair Labor Standards Act, which sets standards for minimum wage, overtime pay, recordkeeping and youth employment, “does not require payment for time not worked, including attending a funeral.” Laws vary by state: Oregon is the only U.S. state to legally require bereavement leave for qualifying employees, though said leave can be unpaid. Meanwhile, some states, such as California, legally require paid bereavement leave for certain public-sector workers, such as state employees. The extent to which bereavement leave is available is largely limited to the attendance and, to some extent, the arrangement of a memorial service for a loved one. This informs the length of bereavement leave given to workers:
Across the private sector, paid bereavement leave typically spans three to five days for full-time employees following the loss of an immediate family member, and one day following the loss of an extended family member or close friend, when it’s offered.
-- Bereavement leave isn’t federally mandated for any workers; thus, it’s largely a matter of whether employers choose to provide it.
In some major capitalist countries other than the U.S., bereavement leave is somewhat more substantial. In Canada, bereavement leave of at least three days is guaranteed for employees under the Canada Labour Code, with pay contingent on duration of employment. The U.K. classifies leave for an emergency involving a dependent as a right, but doesn’t require that it be paid, and doesn’t guarantee bereavement leave specifically. France mandates three days’ paid leave for the death of a spouse, partner or close relative, and five days for the death of a child for all workers via the French Labor Code. In recent years, certain high-profile companies have broadened their bereavement leave policies. In 2017, Facebook augmented its bereavement-leave allowance to up to 20 days following the death of an immediate family member, and up to 10 for an extended family member. This happened shortly after the company’s COO, Sheryl Sandberg, was suddenly widowed. At the time of these announcements, corporate media outlets lavished these companies with praise, depicting their actions as beacons of hope for the U.S. labor landscape.
What the press failed to ask, however, was why labor policies affecting the mental health of millions of workers should be so fragmented and piecemeal — and why the most generous versions of them should hinge upon the impulses of immensely wealthy executives.
- The Repercussions of Trauma and Loss: The answer to these questions, of course, is that these policies are the product of decades of neoliberal governance, wherein employers are given considerable latitude regarding labor practices. Employers benefit from the fact that universal paid bereavement leave isn’t federally mandated: This gives them more control over how much they invest in their workers, and further legal license to ignore their workers’ mental and physical health requirements. Thus, because federal labor law doesn’t guarantee protections for bereft workers, those workers’ wellbeing often suffers. This was the case for Alex Blank Millard, who, several years ago, lost her father suddenly on the first day of her weeklong vacation from her job at an organization that provided no bereavement leave. Millard says that before her vacation, she routinely worked 60 to 70 hours per week and was commended for her job performance. When she returned to work grief-stricken, she was unable to concentrate..“I had to ask permission to take one extra day at the end of the week. I came back, and I was understandably a mess.”
Experiences such as Millard’s are symptomatic of a larger problem, according to therapist and mental-health educator Araya Baker. “I don’t think three to five days is sufficient. “There should definitely be a conversation about how to accommodate someone’s grief and how to help them adapt both outside of the workplace, but also in the context of professional space, because those things often go hand in hand,” says Baker.
- Whose Grief Counts: In addition to failing to account for the psychological and physiological process of coping with loss, current standards for workplace bereavement leave policies also run the risk of hierarchizing grief and those who mourn. For example, the standard three-day leave period for immediate family “is dismissive of folks, especially in the LGBTQ community, where a lot of folks have chosen family” because their families have rejected them, says Lopez.
She adds, “A lot of communities of color grow up with extended family. You have uncles and aunts and cousins, everybody who is as close, many times, as immediate family members. But if it’s not an immediate family member, you [often] don’t even get those three days. It completely dismisses the impact of grief for many people.” These forms of discrimination also surface for workers who don’t have the ability to take extended unpaid leave. Even for those whose work allows unpaid leave to heal from loss, the lack of income disproportionately affects those living in financial precarity, effectively stratifying the grief process.
Thus, at a time when a reported 40% of people living in the U.S. can’t cover a $400 emergency expense, and another reported 40% are one paycheck away from poverty, unpaid leave presents many people with an unfair choice: Take time to grieve but lose desperately needed income, or return to work and repress the repercussions of an extremely raw trauma.
- The Union Struggle for Bereavement Protections: For many unions, steady, paid bereavement leave is a necessary component of worker protections. Because unionized workers can influence their own labor conditions more than non-unionized workers can, unionized jobs are likelier to offer benefits like paid bereavement leave, sick leave and maternity leave. UE argues that paid bereavement leave should be universally provided, rather than a matter of corporate discretion. Read More, https://truthout.org/articles/when-it-comes-to-bereavement-leave-the-us-is-unspeakably-cruel/
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