I may be uneducated because I've never taken advantage of it, but isn't FMLA a form of this? I had coworkers disappear for 3 - 6 months for roughly 2/3 their pay and they don't get fired because of FMLA.
Idk, seems to me that the continuation of pay was your company being nice:
The FMLA entitles eligible employees of covered employers to take unpaid, job-protected leave for specified family and medical reasons with continuation of group health insurance coverage under the same terms and conditions as if the employee had not taken leave.
Not really, where I am full-time employees are legally entitled to a minimum 28 paid days off per year (including public holidays at employer's discretion) and that's still low compared to some of the better European countries. My understanding is that the US does not require any paid time off and this petition is to fix that.
3-6 months maternity leave at 66% pay isn't necessarily great either, here we have 52 weeks maternity leave starting at 90% pay for 6 weeks then the lower of 90% pay or a fixed weekly amount for another 33 weeks. Returning to work in the first 6 months entitles you to the same job, in the second 6 months an equivalent job (equal pay, location, etc). There's also 1-2 weeks paternity leave for other involved adults (eg father or partner) and the option to share up to 50 weeks of the maternity leave entitlement with them. And those are just legal minimums, for instance my work offers much better paternity leave than just a couple of weeks.
Yeaaahhh, good luck with that. With the current state of affairs I wouldn't be surprised if slavery will be back in the US within a decade, and you're talking about paid maternity leave? Where do you think you live?
I'm sure one or two of them will read it and have an "awww, bless your heart" moment. The rest of those shit-cunts would throw it back at their staffers and fire them for letting such a thing reach their eyes.
Don't worry, the industries' lobby groups will see that this petition gets nowhere. Instead of petitioning, you should have bribed enough representatives with trips, campaign contributions, or other gifts, because only that is what ultimately makes the law.