MK Rachel Azaria (Kulanu Kahlon) has now proposed a law that would advance us further step towards that goal. Azaria's proposed law is during the first four months after returning from paternity/maternity leave after a new birth, a new father could take an hour off his workday, and finish his workday a bit earlier.
Azaria's proposal is in order to allow the father and mother to have a better "division of labor" with the kids and help out in picking up the kids from school.
While this hour off the workday is already in effect for new mothers, and it is called a "nursing hour" to provide a new mother the ability to nurse her baby during the day, this law would also change the name of it to "parenting hour", and apply to fathers as well.
Ss far as I know, regarding maternity leave and paternity leave it is only either/or. Either the mother takes maternity leave or the father takes paternity leave, and they can divide it up. But they cannot both take the full leave together. Interestingly, this parenting hour would seemingly apply to both mothers and fathers and both could equally take advantage of it at the same time.
The law would also change the name of maternity leave to "tkufat leida vhorut" - birth and parenting period.
source: Israel Hayom
the only thing not clear that I see in this idea is what is considered an hour off, an hour early, for fathers. I remember seeing a study a while back about Israel's workforce being one of the highest in the world in the sense of employees working beyond their set hours. Meaning, employees who must work, say, an 8.5 hour workday, on average are working 9 or 10 hour workdays.So, will this law encourage such an employee to work 7.5 hours or to work 8 or 9 hours for the four month period?
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For women at my company, the milking hour was a carte blanche to work only eight hours and leave work, no overtime. My wife could really use my help right now. If I had a milking hour, my managers would also expect me to work only 40 hours a week and no more.
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