Technology
Mike Blake / Reuters
Netflix is giving new parents on its payroll up to a year of paid leave — a move that could pressure other technology employers to improve their baby benefits as they vie for talent.
The employee benefit, announced Tuesday on Netflix's blog, is generous even by the standards of Silicon Valley, where perquisites supplement lavish salaries in the competition for computer programmers and other tech workers.
Netflix's baby-benefit policy covers all the roughly 2,000 people working at its Internet video and DVD-by-mail services, the company said.
The issue of leave for mothers and fathers is attracting more attention. President Barack Obama during his State of the Union address suggested U.S. policy and attitudes needed to change, saying, “Today we’re the only advanced country on earth that doesn’t guarantee paid sick leave or paid maternity leave to our workers.”
The U.S. and Papua New Guinea are the only two countries in the world that do not offer paid maternity leave, according to a 2014 report by the International Labor Organization (ILO), the United Nations agency charged with promoting labor rights.
“It’s time we stop treating child care as a side issue or a women’s issue and treat it like the national economic priority that it is for all of us,” Obama said.
Other tech companies have expanded parental leave policies in recent years, although mostly for mothers, according to a recent survey by The Atlantic.
Google, where just 18 percent of its worldwide technology jobs were held by women at the start of 2015, offers 18 weeks of paid maternity leave, and parents can take seven to 12 weeks of paid bonding time during their child's first year.
Apple and Facebook last year announced they would give women tens of thousands of dollars to freeze their eggs and delay having children.
Al Jazeera and wire services
Other industrialized countries surpass the US when it comes to policies on sick leave, parental leave and child care
Experts question Apple and Facebook benefits, suggesting child care and flexible hours would be more family-friendly
40 percent of US households rely on income from working mothers, making paid maternity leave important
Workplace flexibility for both parents isn't an indulgence. It’s necessary for a gender-equal society
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