> Three-years maternity leave? That's unheard of in western Europe, most countries allow for less than a year (my wife got 6 months in the UK);
9 months is the "baseline" maternity leave in Finland. My sister had a baby and ended up being away from work for almost two years. She just started working again this week, and the same company was legally obligated to take her back.
If you have someone gone for a year in a small company, that's a huge problem. It's not that they're remote for the year, they're gone. They don't know the new staff, work, projects, etc.
One of the favorite words around here is "pivot" and ponder how a company can pivot successfully with some of these considerations. Sometimes a pivot will completely change a product, business model, industry, etc and the company has to hire or layoff people accordingly.
It sucks by all measures (I've been on the wrong end of that), but ponder how much more difficult that gets when some of your staff is untouchable.
Even if it's not a problem, it changes your mindset and gives you yet another thing to worry about.
Not all the ex-socialist block have 3 years maternity leave. Here in Bulgaria it is 9 months and it is payed by the state (from social security fund).
Also the taxes are a lot lower. You have medical insurance (cost of having non-payed health care system: 8%) + social insurance (pension, unemployment compensation, maternity leave: 22%). This insurances are calculated on base up to 1000 euro - so your insurance taxes are max 30% of 1000 euro even if you get more than this level. Over the rest of the money you have 20% flat state tax. On every purchase you have 20% VAT.
Being an entrepreneur is like that: high risk, high stakes, high stress, (hopefully) high rewards. That's how it works. If you want to reduce risk/stress, then you would have to accept less rewards. No employer will ever accept that, so i don't see why workers should accept to suffer in order to make his life easier.
As an entrepreneur, it doesn't make sense to accept no profitability though, and that's what the original article was all about. Trying to maintain profitability in the face of all the obstacles he mentioned.
9 months is the "baseline" maternity leave in Finland. My sister had a baby and ended up being away from work for almost two years. She just started working again this week, and the same company was legally obligated to take her back.