U.S. Far Behind On Workers' Rights: Report

While 177 nations guarantee paid leave for new mothers and another 163 nations mandate paid sick leave, the U.S. requires neither.

(Corbis)

A new study released Tuesday, Raising the Global Floor, examines workers' rights across 190 nations worldwide and finds that the U.S. lags behind nearly all other countries. The U.S. does not guarantee paid sick leave or annual leave, paid parental leave, paid time off to care for sick children or even one day of rest per week. And female workers may be suffering the most.

Authors Jody Heymann, founding director of the Institute for Health and Social Policy at McGill University, and Alison Earle, a research scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health, joined a team of international researchers to examine 190 national policies and look in-depth at the working conditions faced by 55,000 households, creating the most extensive research yet on workers' rights.

The findings do not look good for the U.S. While 177 nations guarantee paid leave for new mothers and another 163 nations mandate paid sick leave, the U.S. requires neither.

The U.S. also falls behind 164 countries that guarantee paid annual vacation, 157 countries that guarantee workers one day of rest each week, 74 countries that offer paid leave to new fathers and 48 countries that allow paid time off to care for sick children.

In fact, the only federal policy that the U.S. guarantees is a wage premium for mandatory overtime, which translates into more pay, yes, but for more work! (Most other countries mandate overtime already.)

The study disputes the idea that providing family-friendly workplace policies will cost jobs or hurt a nation's competitiveness. Indeed, it found just the opposite is true: "There simply is no negative relationship at all between decent working conditions and competitiveness or job creation. We found that a number of these guarantees are associated with increased competitiveness," noted co-author Heymann in a statement.

The research also revealed some big inequalities for the world's women. Globally, when considering both paid and unpaid work, women are more likely than men to work long hours and less likely to have protections at work. In Mexico, 51% of men worked more than 60 hours a week, compared to 84% of women. In Brazil, women are twice as likely as men to work such long hours.