In a move that aligns with many U.S. businesses, the LDS Church will now offer its employees family-friendly and wellness benefits.
The Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — the largest employer in the Beehive State — also is providing short-term disability benefits and has loosened its dress code to include colored shirts for men and dress pants for women.
These changes were announced Wednesday in an internal memo from Mormon officials to thousands of full-time employees at LDS Church headquarters in downtown Salt Lake City, its four church-owned colleges (Brigham Young University, BYU-Idaho, BYU-Hawaii and LDS Business College) and to paid professionals with the Church Educational System.
Going forward, full-time, benefited employees who give birth "will be eligible for six weeks of paid medical maternity leave to recover from childbirth," the policy memo reads.
At the same time, full-time, benefited employees also can take one week of "paid parental leave," the church document says, "to bond with their new children from birth or adoption." For mothers who give birth, this means an additional week of leave.
As to the dress-code changes, headquarters will now allow women to don professional pantsuits as well as skirts and dresses, and men may wear light-colored shirts with ties, and remove their jackets when weather is hot or for "movement through the building."
In May 2011, the male-dominated church made a similar nod to the discomforts of weather, when it eliminated the pantyhose requirement for female employees at headquarters, allowing them to go barelegged.
Women being allowed to wear trouser suits and go 'bare legged' was news in the 60's. It's 2017.
“When we are confronted with evidence that challenges our deeply held beliefs we are more likely to reframe the evidence than we are to alter our beliefs. We simply invent new reasons, new justifications, new explanations. Sometimes we ignore the evidence altogether.” (Mathew Syed 'Black Box Thinking')
Why is the church consistently 20 to 40 years behind the civilized world when they have prophets to give them revelation and foresight?
"Jesus gave us the gospel, but Satan invented church. It takes serious evil to formalize faith into something tedious and then pile guilt on anyone who doesn’t participate enthusiastically." - Robert Kirby
Beer makes you feel the way you ought to feel without beer. -- Henry Lawson
This is good for all those who are employees of the LDS church.
The family leave is quite a bit shorter than FMLA (Family Medical Leave Act) requires of private employers, but still an improvement.
Does the LDS church try to emulate the charitableness of the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) too, when it comes to those with disabilities that impact but not preclude performing job duties?
This press release should be viewed as an embarrassment to the church. Really? Now colored shirts for men and dress pants for women are acceptable? Welcome to the 1960s.
sunstoned wrote:This press release should be viewed as an embarrassment to the church.
Why should change be viewed as embarrassment? Especially if it is change that is considered improvement?
If we learned that a neighbor waiited 7 years to improve on something, and that happened today, should we criticize him/her for what seems to be a long delay?
Or simply commend & cheer them on for taking that step?
sunstoned wrote:This press release should be viewed as an embarrassment to the church.
Why should change be viewed as embarrassment? Especially if it is change that is considered improvement?
If we learned that a neighbor waiited 7 years to improve on something, and that happened today, should we criticize him/her for what seems to be a long delay?
Or simply commend & cheer them on for taking that step?
We are not talking about a next door neighbor here. We are talking about a repressive organization that is forced by outside influences (read: public opinion) to begrudgingly make some minor concessions.
In a statment Elder Quentin L. Cook said: "I would hope that Latter-day Saints would be at the forefront in creating an environment in the workplace that is more receptive and accommodating to both men and women."
At the forefront? Seriously? In what way is the decision in 2017 to allow men to wear coloured shirts and take their jackets off if it's hot and women to wear pants or go bare-legged, at the forefront of anything?
Does he even know what the world outside of Mormonism looks like?
What a ridiculous statement.
“When we are confronted with evidence that challenges our deeply held beliefs we are more likely to reframe the evidence than we are to alter our beliefs. We simply invent new reasons, new justifications, new explanations. Sometimes we ignore the evidence altogether.” (Mathew Syed 'Black Box Thinking')