How Unions Help Moms Take Maternity Leave
“The study is unique in that rather than simply investigating whether unions help workers bargain for stronger benefits, Park and his colleagues looked at the role they play in influencing whether or not women take advantage of the benefits available to them. They hypothesized that a working woman’s decision whether to take maternity leave is dependent on four factors: availability, awareness, affordability, and assurance. Put another way, if an expecting mother has a paid-maternity-leave benefit available to her, she also has to be aware that the leave exists, she has to be able to afford to take it, and, in the long term, she has to be assured that she won’t be penalized for taking it by losing hours, pay, or promotion opportunities.”