Letters to the Editor
March 5, 2004

To the Editor,

If I am not mistaken, there is a proposal on the floor to expand the federal Family Leave Act to include four weeks of PAID leave. That is absurd. How do you plan to compensate the people employed here that are not going to have children? What you are proposing is giving one group of employees/faculty a benefit simply because they are able to and choose to have children. What you are doing is giving them an extra four weeks of paid vacation. Can I get those same four weeks PAID to go and see my grandchildren?

While I agree that it would be wonderful to have the security of the parents at home for as long as possible, maybe a little planning would fix that. Talk about elitist. We already pay more taxes because our children are grown or we don’t have any. We won’t get to use the child’s education discount. Now you plan on attaching another penalty to those of us that won’t be having children. Now that is elitist.

If you want eight weeks to stay home with your newborn, plan ahead.

-- Allan R. Trombley, utilities technician, energy office/ DigSafe