The United States doesn’t have a stellar record on paid employee leave. Indeed, it is one of the few developed countries that has no paid maternity leave requirement. But a new study by the Center for American Progress finds that Latino employees in particular are the least likely to have paid leave or workplace flexibility of any sort.

Latinos tend to be in lower-wage jobs where fewer benefits are offered, thanks in part to institutionalized racism and in part to the economics of new immigrant labor. Because of the low quality of jobs for many Latinos, fewer than 40 percent report having flexible hours — the ability to shift work schedules based on outside obligations. Only 38.4 percent of Latinos have any paid sick leave, and just about a quarter of Latino employees (25.1 percent) have paid parental leave, lower than any other racial group:

Paid leave is proven to benefit both employees and employers. A lack of paid leave leads to the spread of disease, limits the people who can apply for the job, and increases the number of on-the-job injuries.

Discriminatory lending policies made the housing crisis worse for African-American and Latino borrowers, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told a financial summit held Thursday in Atlanta. The housing crisis and economic slump followed the “unfortunate pattern” of “disproportionately affecting” minorities, Bernanke said, pointing to the fact that black home ownership rates have fallen five percentage points in the last eight years, compared to just a two percent drop for the general population.

Two major discriminatory actions made the crisis worse for minorities, Bernanke said:

“One is redlining, in which mortgage lenders discriminate against minority neighborhoods, and the other is pricing discrimination, in which lenders charge minorities higher loan prices than they would to comparable nonminority borrowers,” Bernanke said.

“We remain committed to vigorous enforcement of the nation’s fair lending laws,” he added.

Studies have shown that blacks and Latinos were twice as likely to have been affected by the housing crisis as white borrowers, largely for the reasons Bernanke outlined. Many minority borrowers were pushed into riskier, more expensive subprime loans even though they qualified for lower-interest prime mortgages. Subprime loans, which can add $100,000 to the price over the life of the mortgage, were given to 30.9 percent of Latinos and 41.5 percent of blacks, compared to just 17.8 percent of whites.

Wells Fargo, the nation’s largest mortgage lender, paid $175 million to settle discriminatory lending charges in July, and other mortgage companies have been fined and ordered to pay settlements to homeowners they discriminated against.

A nonprofit group that supports fair housing has filed a lawsuit claiming that Bank of America, the nation’s second largest mortgage servicer, has failed to maintain and market foreclosed homes in African American and Latino neighborhoods the same way it does in white neighborhoods.

The National Fair Housing Alliance filed the complaint with the Department of Housing and Urban Development after examining Bank of America-owned properties in eight American cities and finding “significant racial disparities” in how the properties were maintained and marketed to potential buyers, Reuters reports:

The group reviewed 373 properties owned, managed or serviced by Bank of America in eight U.S. cities as part of its ongoing examination of how U.S. lenders maintain bank-owned properties. Investigators evaluated properties for problems such as broken windows, overgrown lawns, trash accumulation and a lack of “for sale” signs.

“We have found significant racial disparities,” Shanna Smith, chief executive officer of the National Fair Housing Alliance in a conference call with reporters.

NFHA filed similar complaints against Wells Fargo, the nation’s largest mortgage servicer, and U.S. Bancorp earlier this year after it released a report detailing the disparities between white and black and Latino neighborhoods. The report looked at bank-owned homes in nine cities and found that properties in black and Latino neighborhoods were more likely to be left in disrepair than homes in white neighborhoods, driving down home prices, increasing vagrancy and crime rates, and making it harder to sell homes in those neighborhoods.

Discrimination was widespread throughout the mortgage and foreclosure process leading up to and after the housing crisis. Black and Latino borroweres were twice as likely to have been affected by the crisis because banks that used predatory practices against borrowers were even more predatory toward minorities. Pushing qualified lenders into subprime loans cost minorities as much as $100,000 in additional interest payments.