Wednesday, March 30, 2016
Open Society Foundations' 6-Month Paid Paternity Leave Leads Generous-Parental-Leave Club
Sandra Schwarzer, global director of human resources at Open Society Foundations, one of the largest nonprofit organizations in the world, and her organization are leaders in the recent paternity-leave movement gaining momentum at corporations large and small. Starting in January, 2014, George Soros’s global organization announced that all of its 800 employees are eligible for six-months parental leave, half of it full pay, three months at 70 percent pay — with tons of flexibility of how they chose to use it. This benefit extends to the foundation’s U.S. offices, which employ 450. It applies to mothers, fathers, custodial grandparents, births, adoptions, fostering and surrogacy.
Schwarzer, who I recently became friends with, calls the move her “proudest professional accomplishment” — one rooted in gratitude for her own experience enjoying four-months of fully paid parental leave while living in France. The German native, now residing in London with her two small children, lived for a time in the United States and saw first-hand how parents here cobbled together sick and vacation days — or quit work all together — in order to stay home with newborns or otherwise grow their families. It’s well documented that the United States’ is the only industrialized nation in the world without mandated paid maternity leave. . .