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Unlimited paid time off policies are currently fashionable and widely discussed by HR professionals around the globe. While on the one hand, paid time off is considered a key benefit by employees and unlimited paid time off policies (UPTO) are seen as a major perk which may help in recruiting and retaining talented employees, on the other hand, early adopters reported that employees took less time off than previously, presumably leading to higher burnout rates. In this conceptual review, we discuss the theoretical and empirical evidence regarding the potential effects of UPTO on leave utilization, well-being and performance outcomes. We start out by defining UPTO and placing it in a historical and international perspective. Next, we discuss the key role of leave utilization in translating UPTO into concrete actions. The core of our article constitutes the description of the effects of UPTO and the two pathways through which these effects are assumed to unfold: autonomy need satisfaction and detrimental social processes. We moreover discuss the boundary conditions which facilitate or inhibit the successful utilization of UPTO on individual, team, and organizational level. In reviewing the literature from different fields and integrating existing theories, we arrive at a conceptual model and five propositions, which can guide future research on UPTO. We conclude with a discussion of the theoretical and societal implications of UPTO. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Beyond the sweeping physiological effects of COVID-19 infections in 2020 and 2021, the psychosocial impacts of lockdowns, social distancing, and the associated disruptions to daily life have brought on a simultaneous mental health crisis, particularly among many working mothers who are disproportionately balancing childcare, virtual schooling, and employment vulnerability. The aim of this study was to measure the mental health status of working mothers in the United States and associations with the provision of family-friendly employment benefits one year into the pandemic. Methods: Cross-sectional data were collected from a sample of working mothers in the U.S. using an online survey of mental health status and the receipt of employer-provided family-friendly benefits. Mental health was measured with the Kessler 6 (K-6) and the Short Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (SWEMWBS). Perceived helpfulness of benefits was assessed through self-reported Likert-scale scores of 0 (not at all helpful) to 4 (extremely helpful) to determine mean helpfulness scores for benefit types. Multivariable logistic regression analyses were conducted to determine associations between receipt of employment benefits and serious mental illness (SMI). Results: A total of 728 participants met the study criteria, 83.7% were non-Hispanic/Latino white and 61.1% were 35–44 years of age. Among study participants, 54.3% (n = 395) and 21.8% (n = 159) reported psychological distress levels associated with moderate mental illness (MMI) and serious mental illness (SMI), respectively. Not receiving benefits was associated with a 50% increase in odds of SMI (aOR = 1.50, 95% CI [1.03–2.20], p = 0.036). Benefits perceived to be the most helpful for participants were flexible hours/schedule (3.5; SD ± 0.9), flexible work location (3.3; SD ± 1.1), and supplemental paid time off (3.1; SD ± 1.1), with mean scores above very helpful. Conclusion: Results suggest employment benefits may help support the mental health of working mothers and provide a call to action to employers and policy stakeholders to develop solutions addressing gaps in workplace benefits and mental health support for working parents, with sustainable reform in mind to mitigate employment benefit inequities exposed by the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trade union institutions are historically and comparatively weak in the United States, and union membership has been in steady decline over several decades. Scholars thus question the contemporary relevance of organized labor to social policy. Yet, there is considerable state-level variation in social policy and union institutional strength that remains underexamined. Focusing on variability across US states, this paper uses mixed-methods analysis to examine relationships between organized labor and parental and family leave legislation under varying political conditions. Event history analysis of state-level leave policy adoption from 1983 to 2016 shows that union institutional strength, particularly in the public sector, is positively associated with the timing of leave policy adoption. These findings are robust to the inclusion of other factors, including Democratic control of state houses, which is also shown to facilitate leave policy adoption. Comparative case studies support event history findings and illustrate how state house partisanship informs the level of government that leave advocates target for policy change. The paper concludes by suggesting further attention to subnational policies and investigation into the social movement practice of target-shifting and its effects. Ultimately, the paper demonstrates the operation of power resources at the subnational level within a liberal market national context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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While much work remains to be done, the United States is experiencing a period of rapid and unprecedented progress in expanding workplace leave rights, particularly at the state level. Yet our policy vocabulary has not kept pace. What we refer to as leave rights are actually at least six kinds of rights, which appear in different combinations across many types of laws. This Article identifies the six distinct leave rights and analyzes various kinds of existing leave laws under the six-right framework, in order to better understand the existing policy landscape and provide more nuanced tools for future policymaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Résumé: La prescription des arrêts de travail pour maladie (ATM) pose problème aux médecins généralistes (MG). L'objectif de cette étude est d'analyser l'opinion des MG sur des propositions issues de deux enquêtes concernant la gestion des ATM et les référentiels d'ATM de l'assurance-maladie. Les MG prescrivant 75 % des ATM en ville, la gestion, la réglementation, l'harmonisation des ATM pourraient être uniformisées dans les différents régimes sociaux, à l'aide de propositions consensuelles : autocertification, délégation des ATM de longues durées, délai de carence. The prescription of sick leave is a problem for general practitioners (GPs). The objective of this study is to analyse the opinion of GPs on proposals resulting from two surveys concerning sick leave management and sick leave duration guidelines for health insurance. GPs prescribing 75% of sick leave in cities, management, regulation, standardisation of sick leave could be standardized in the different social regimes, using consensus proposals: self-certification, delegation of long-term sick leave, waiting periods... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People with mental illness must often decide the extent to which they want to disclose their mental illness publicly. Especially in the context of work, this is a complex and individual decision. This Open Forum discusses the importance of well-reasoned disclosure management to increase the chances of successful workplace reintegration after a leave of absence due to a mental illness. The authors posit that despite the risks of stigma and discrimination, disclosing a mental illness to an employer can benefit employees. However, proper support is often essential in establishing how to best manage disclosure or nondisclosure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using information published in 2014 annual review of the International Network on Leave Policies and Research, the article analyses parental leave and benefit policies in 29 countries to identify which characteristics can potentially facilitate fathers’ take-up of parental leave. The scarce statistics that is available shows that only few countries have been successful in increasing fathers’ participation in the parental leaves, despite the fact that some recent policy schemes seem to have drawn lessons from the Nordic success. There are several countries which indeed have adopted principles similar to the Nordic countries in their leave schemes, such as fathers’ quota, generous income-related benefit or long duration of the leave. The evidence suggests that only taking over some elements of the successful policy schemes does not necessarily lead to a change in the leave-taking behaviour of fathers and families. The evidence shows reasonably high take-up of parental leave only in countries where there is a combination of fathers’ quota and high level of benefit. There is still no evidence to confirm that replicating the fathers’ quota in its Nordic designs other societies would generate similar behavioural change as it did in the Nordic countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on trends and disparities in leave use under California's Paid Family Leave Program. California enacted the country's first state- level PFL policy (CA- PFL) that provides six weeks of leave and is financed through employee payroll taxes and since then, four other states and Washington, DC have followed suit.

This review is based on the international and Australian literature on paid parental leave. It does not aim to be exhaustive but focuses on the impact paid parental leave has on the labour force participation of mothers in developed countries. Four aspects of paid parental leave are explored, including the impacts of: introducing paid parental leave; changing the duration of existing paid parental leave; changing the generosity of existing paid parental leave payments; and paid paternity leave. It interprets the implications in the context of Australia, and includes descriptive information on the recent and current situation in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paid sick leave is increasingly identified as a social justice issue having important implications for health and wellness; however, little is known about its relationship to mental health. Data from the 2015 cross section of the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS; 2015) were used to examine the relationship between paid sick leave and psychological distress during the last 30 days among N = 17,897 working United States adults. The 6-item Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K6), a valid and reliable instrument for assessing psychological distress in population based samples, was used to measure the outcome variable of interest. The K6 score was computed from 6 questions and was regressed on paid sick leave status, after controlling for variables known to be related to psychological distress. Results indicated that workers who lack paid sick leave benefits report a statistically significant higher level of psychological distress, and are 1.45 times more likely to report their distress symptoms interfere a lot with their life or activities compared with workers with paid sick leave. This research adds to a body of work analyzing institutional structures and social determinants of health. Findings support the potential value of paid sick leave as an intervention to promote behavioral health. (PsycINFO Database Record [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When compared to other developed nations, the United States fares poorly with regard to benefits for workers. While the situation is grim for most U.S. workers, it is worse for low-wage workers. Data show a significant benefits gap between low-wage and high-wage in terms of flexible work arrangements (FWAs), paid leave, pensions, and employer-sponsored health-care insurance, among other things. This gap exists notwithstanding the fact that FWAs and employment benefits produce positive returns for employees, employers, and society in general. Despite these returns, this Article contends that employers will be loath to extend FWAs and greater employment benefits to low-wage workers due to (1) concerns about costs, (2) a surplus of low-wage workers in the labor market, (3) negative perceptions of the skill of low-wage workers and the value of low-wage work, (4) other class-based stereotypes and biases, and (5) structural impediments in some low-wage jobs. Given the decline of unions and limited legislative action to date, the Article maintains that low-wage workers are in a “different class of care” with little hope for meaningful change on the horizon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canada has two parental leave benefit programs for the care of a newborn or adopted child: a federal program, and, since 2006, a provincial program in Québec. Informed by a social reproduction framework, this article compares access to parental leave benefits between Québec and the rest of Canada by family income and by its two different programs. Our analysis of quantitative data reveals that maternal access to leave benefits has improved dramatically over the past decade in the province of Québec, especially for low-income households. By contrast, on average 38% of mothers in the rest of Canada are consistently excluded from maternity or parental benefits under the federal program. We argue that one key explanation for the gap in rates of access to benefits between the two programs and between families by income is difference in eligibility criteria. In Canada, parental leaves paid for by all employers and employees are unevenly supporting the social reproduction of higher earners. Our article draws attention to the need for greater public and scholarly scrutiny of social class inequality effects of parental leave policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from the 1997 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY-97), we examine the effects of California's paid family leave program ( CA-PFL) on mothers' and fathers' use of leave during the period surrounding child birth, and on the timing of mothers' return to work, the probability of eventually returning to prechildbirth jobs, and subsequent labor market outcomes. We estimate multivariate difference-in-differences regression models that compare changes in the outcomes for new California parents before and after the enactment of CA-PFL to those for corresponding parents in control states. Our results suggest that CA-PFL raised leave use by almost five weeks for the average covered mother and two to three days for the corresponding father. Maternal leave-taking appears to increase in the quarter before the birth and to extend through the two quarters after it. Paternal leave-taking rises fairly quickly after the birth and is short-lasting. Rights to paid leave are also associated with higher work and employment probabilities for mothers nine to 12 months after birth, probably because they increase job continuity among those with relatively weak labor force attachments. We also find positive effects of California's program on hours and weeks of work during their child's second year of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is one of only a few studies on the division of care leave for sick children (temporary parental leave) between parents in Sweden and is the first to examine the importance of differences in parents’ work characteristics. The study uses register data for parents with children born between 1999 and 2002 to analyse two aspects of parents’ employment that may be of importance for the division of care leave: their relative resources, in this case wages, and different occupations. First, the results show that a father’s share of care leave increases as the mother’s relative wage decreases. This suggests that decisions about care leave are influenced by bargaining power gained through differences in resources. Second, the resources of couples where both partners work in the same occupation are more equal, and such couples also divide care leave more equally than couples with different occupations. However, the fact that same-occupation couples tend to share care leave more equally does not seem to be explained by similarities in the partners’ work characteristics, and may instead be due to unmeasured, stable characteristics. Greater income and career possibilities for the women are proposed as a possible explanation of the division of care leave for same-occupation couples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ECJ 6 November 2018, case C-684/16 (Max-Planck-Gesellschaft), Paid leave: A worker does not automatically lose the right to annual leave because s/he did not apply for it. The employer must have informed the employee about the opportunity to take the leave adequately and in a timely way, and must be able to prove it. Based on the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, this applies between individuals as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

EELC 2018/42 No reduction of vacation pay for already accrued vacation entitlement in the case of a reduction of weekly working hours later on (GE): According to German law, every employee is entitled to paid annual leave. The amount of pay is generally calculated based on the current salary (known as the "principle of loss of pay") but a reduction of working hours during the year does not lead to a reduction of entitlement to holiday pay for previously acquired holiday entitlements. If the entitlement was already acquired before the reduction of working time (which can happen because in Germany holiday entitlement is acquired at the beginning of the calendar year), pay during leave will be based on the salary agreed between the employer and employee when the holiday entitlement was acquired and thus, based on the 'old' salary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]