A law requiring companies to offer employees unpaid time off to care

Question

Competition Mode Question

A law requiring companies to offer employees unpaid time off to care for their children will harm the economic competitiveness of our nation's businesses.
Companies must be free to set their own employment policies without mandated parental-leave regulations.

Which of the following, if true, would most seriously weaken the conclusion of the argument above?

A. A parental-leave law will serve to strengthen the family as a social institution in this country.
B. Many businesses in this country already offer employees some form of parental leave.
C. Some of the countries with the most economically competitive businesses have strong parental-leave regulations.
D. Only companies with one hundred or more employees would be subject to the proposed parental-leave law.
E. In most polls, a majority of citizens say they favor passage of a parental-leave law.

minganh · Accepted Answer

A. A parental-leave law will serve to strengthen  the family  as a social institution in this country. -> irrelevant, here what the problem concerns about is  the competitiveness of their nation's business 
B. Many businesses in this country already offer employees some form of parental leave. -> the law requires to offer employees unpaid time off so if some form of parental leave is not unpaid leave, the businesses must change their regulations to comply with the law -> still no freedom 
C. Some of the countries with the most economically competitive businesses have strong parental-leave regulations. -> seems good, this choice proves regulations donot harm the competitiveness
D. Only companies with one hundred or more employees would be subject to the proposed parental-leave law -> what if companies with one hundred or more employees account for the large proportion of nation's businesses?
E. In most polls, a majority of citizens say they favor passage of a parental-leave law -> irrelevant, what citizens say may not effect the competitiveness

So C

CareerGeek · Answer

Argument: Parental leaves harm nation's businesses. 
Any option which would say opposite of the above argument will weaken the same.

Option C clearly says, the countries which are economically competitive have strong parental-leave regulation
--> Implies that parental-leaves do not harm the competitiveness of busniesses

IMO Option C

Archit3110 · Answer

IMO C: Some of the countries with the most economically competitive businesses have strong parental-leave regulations.

A law requiring companies to offer employees unpaid time off to care for their children will harm the economic competitiveness of our nation's businesses.
Companies must be free to set their own employment policies without mandated parental-leave regulations.

Which of the following, if true, would most seriously weaken the conclusion of the argument above?

A. A parental-leave law will serve to strengthen the family as a social institution in this country.
B. Many businesses in this country already offer employees some form of parental leave.
C. Some of the countries with the most economically competitive businesses have strong parental-leave regulations.
D. Only companies with one hundred or more employees would be subject to the proposed parental-leave law.
E. In most polls, a majority of citizens say they favor passage of a parental-leave law.

exc4libur · Answer

ARGUMENT
  Law requiring comps to offer parental leave will harm the nations business competitiveness;
  Comps must set their own parental policies.

WEAKEN
A. irrelevant, this doesn't say that strengthening the family means more a competitive nation;
B. if many offer some form of leave, then this could strengthen the fact that comps should set their own policies;
D. irrelevant;
E. irrelevant;

Ans (C)  If some with the MOST competitive businesses have strong regulations, then there must be something flawed in the argument.

madgmat2019 · Answer

Conclusion: New law should not be enforced on companies. Choice should be left to the companies
So, the authors concludes this because this new law will harm economic competitiveness and hence shouldn't be enforce.....but weaken statement should support that its not going to effect economic competitiveness...........C clearly does that.....

OA:C

eakabuah · Answer

The right answer is option C.

Cause: Mandated parental leave regulations.
Effect: Harm the economic competitiveness of our nation's businesses.
Conclusion: Companies must be free to set their own employment policies without mandated parental-leave regulations.

What about if some of the nations that have strong economic competitiveness also have mandatory parental leave regulations. That would mean that the conclusion drawn above is weakened in that mandated parental leave regulations do not necessarily rob a nation's businesses of their competitiveness. This is exactly what option C states, hence the answer has to be option C in my opinion.

sangeetkm · Answer

C. Substantiate to weaken the conclusion.

suchithra · Answer

Given : Law requiring mandated parental leave is detrimental to the economics of the companies. Therefore it should be taken off.

Presumption : What if by taking off the parental leave, the economics of the companies even worsens? The author sounds as if parental law has no advantages. What if the citizens start to leave the company if parental law is removed.

A. A parental-leave law will serve to strengthen the family as a social institution in this country.
Doesnt show relation to business' performance. 
B. Many businesses in this country already offer employees some form of parental leave.
We are not concerned about the current condition. 
C. Some of the countries with the most economically competitive businesses have strong parental-leave regulations.
We are not concerned about the current condition but rather what is correct. 
D. Only companies with one hundred or more employees would be subject to the proposed parental-leave law.
This talks only about a subsect of the companies. 
E. In most polls, a majority of citizens say they favor passage of a parental-leave law.
Correct if citizens favor , then removal of parental leave law could have negative consequences.

Answer is E

Harsh9676 · Answer

Hi  suchitra

I think option E just concentrates on conclusion not on the link between conclusion and reasoning.

Also Most citizens is not equal to employees and Favor is not equal to competitiveness (Citizens may not like to be competitive).

Whereas choice C presents a scenario in which Regulations = more competitiveness.

Hope this helps.
Hope this helps.

Fdambro294 · Answer

perhaps just a gap in my knowledge, but generally it always seems that with the Weaken or Strenghthen questions on the GMAT, showing how another city/person/nation/company/etc. reacts to something isn’t relevant to OUR city/person/nation/company etc.

After all, there could be major differences between the 2.

Definitely a wrong thought by me. Just pointing it out in case anyone else is in the same boat.

There are some cases where comparisons to similar entities can Weaken or Strengthen the given argument.

Posted from my mobile device

amoljain · Answer

Hello Expert

In the stated question, I do not concur with the idea that if 'some of the most' countries do it, why should the same be implied in the stated country. There could be more reasons as to why they are economically stable and the off-set of the law has been balanced out by some other scheme (let us say more working hours or 6-day weeks). The statement to me seems too broad to concretely weaken the conclusion.

Your insight would be really helpful. Thanks.

AndrewN · Answer

Hello,  amoljain  and  Fdambro294 . I agree that a country-to-country comparison does not present an ironclad case, but there are two reasons we cannot simply write off such answer choices:

1) Such a comparison may make the most compelling answer of the five presented; and
2)   SPOILER  : Official CR questions, such as  this one  on urban planning, can, on occasion, adopt the same reasoning in correct answer choices.

So, with these two points in mind, I would start by asking whether you believe an alternative option presents a better case as a weakener of this particular conclusion. After all, you are  always  bound by what you see on the screen, and I do not bandy about such extreme language too often.

- Andrew

svasan05 · Answer

This is one of the rare assumption based questions I have come across that requires us to negate an explicitly stated point. Ideally, we should call it an opinion rather than a premise. Either ways, we should be attacking the line of reasoning, which, in this case, is mentioned explicitly.

Let us analyze the answer options:

Let us analyze the answer options:

A. A parental-leave law will serve to strengthen the family as a social institution in this country.  The conclusion is about parental leave policies of companies - social institutions play no role in the argument. Eliminate.

B. Many businesses in this country already offer employees some form of parental leave.  This does not address competitiveness of businesses in any way. Eliminate.

C. Some of the countries with the most economically competitive businesses have strong parental-leave regulations.  Correct answer. It weakens the argument that parental leave regulations weaken business competitiveness, and hence must be left to companies themselves.

D. Only companies with one hundred or more employees would be subject to the proposed parental-leave law.  The business competitiveness argument does not address the number of employees at all. Eliminate.

E. In most polls, a majority of citizens say they favor passage of a parental-leave law.  This does not address competitiveness of businesses in any way. Eliminate.

Hope this helps.

BitooMuch · Answer

but in argument questions we can't compare apples to oranges, here we're comparing the other country.

ManifestDreamMBA · Answer

My concern with answer is Some of the countries with the most economically competitive businesses have  strong  parental-leave regulations - We don't know what strong here suggests.

Is this question correct? Please advise  GMATNinja

DmitryFarberMPrep · Answer

We don't need to know the specific meaning of "strong" in this context. As long as the countries in question do have such regulations, then clearly it isn't necessary for businesses to have complete freedom on family leave in order to be competitive. "Strong" is kind of like "significant"--it's just letting us know that the rules in question are extensive enough to make some kind of difference.

VenkataSai · Answer

Hi, I believe the answer should be B. The below is my reason. Kindly correct me if i'm wrong.
The reason to reject option B was given as, " Though companies are providing some kind of parental leave, what if that is a paid leave and not an unpaid one. Then companies have to change their regulations". 
My query is, if companies are ok to provide a paid leave, then they would definitely be ok to provide an unpaid leave. That is good for the company, in companies point of view. And since giving that kind of leaves is not affecting the economy, then unpaid leave also shouldn't affect it.

On the other hand Option C refers to some other countries. Without considering more details, I believe it will be wrong to take analogy from other countries. I mean we are major economic factor in that country, like it might be because of tourism or IT or some other industry to which this policy might work. So if the major industry of this country is different from that of those being referred to, then it doesn't really weaken the argument.

Would love to have more discussion on this.

DmitryFarberMPrep · Answer

First, be careful about answers referring to "many" or "some." This kind of vague statement doesn't tell us whether the companies in question are a significant portion of the market. Imagine that the argument said raising the minimum wage would place a burden on companies, and we were told that "some" companies paid above the minimum. Great, but what about the rest? Same here. As far as we know, most of the companies have no such policy in place, and might still have trouble with the policy.

Second, the argument isn't saying that providing leave is bad for business. It just states that companies must be free to set their own policies. So it doesn't really matter what companies choose to do. According to the author, it matters that companies be given a choice. Why? That's not clear, so we don't want to try to get into the economics.

As for C, it certainly doesn't prove that these regulations are the cause of the strong business climate in these countries. But it directly addresses the author's assumption that somehow restricting businesses in this way will harm the competitiveness of companies. It shows that competitiveness is compatible with strong national family leave policies, thereby undermining the assumption that we CAN'T have these policies if we want competitive businesses. Could this country be different? Sure it could. But we have no evidence that these policies will be a problem, and with C we now have some evidence that they will NOT be a problem.

A law requiring companies to offer employees unpaid time off to care

Prep Toolkit

Top 5 GMAT Debrief Videos

615 to 715 in 15 Days (Ria's Strategies)

More than Quant/Verbal Abilities: Speed vs. Accuracy

745 with Only Self-Prep and GMAT Club

From 555 to 765: 210-point Improvement

Perfect 805 Score Debrief by Julia

My Rewards

GMAT Critical Reasoning (CR) Questions

A law requiring companies to offer employees unpaid time off to care

Prep Toolkit

615 to 715 in 15 Days (Ria's Strategies)

More than Quant/Verbal Abilities: Speed vs. Accuracy

745 with Only Self-Prep and GMAT Club

From 555 to 765: 210-point Improvement

Perfect 805 Score Debrief by Julia

My Rewards