Be Excellent To Each Other

In a month or so, two of the most senior employees in my company will be on maternity leave (one already is). Sixteen people currently work here, and we're going to have to either shuffle people into a dual role, or replace them for x months (what is it? Seven months, I think).

Either way, that's a lot of money / resource, especially for a small company.

Am I wrong (or, indeed, alone) in thinking that the laws on this are a bit strange? I'm not convinced that someone should have their jobs protected at the company's cost if they decide to start a family.

Let us debate!

All women, irrespective of service are entitled to 26 weeks ordinary maternity leave (OML), and a further 26 weeks additional maternity leave (AML). The contract of employment continues as it is, with all terms and conditions except salary and statutory and contractual annual leave accrues.

The employer can make 'reasonable' contact with the employee during this time, and there can be 'keeping in touch' days with fair pay, but to keep maternity rights, they can only work a maximum of ten days.

There's the right to return to the same job in OML and if on AML, the right to return to the same job, or a suitable and appropriate job on no less favorable terms and conditions of pay and seniority. If there is redunancy problems, the woman must be offered any suitable alternative vacancy before the contract ends (over other employees, a rare example of positive discrimination), on no less favourable terms and conditions and dismissal, selection for redundancy due to pregnancy or maternity leave is automatic unfair dismissal.

There is no right to the normal salary, unless the contract provides for this. To claim Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP), need to be employed for 40 weeks before the expected week of childbirth (EWC), and pregnant at 11 weeks before the EWC. SMP is 6 weeks at 90% average weekly earning, then 33 weeks at a flat rate of £124.88. The employer can reclaim 92% of these through National Insurance Contributions, small employers can recover all of it and a 5% admin cost. All rights to SMP cease on return to work.

Right, so that's what it is, but not why.

I'm filling in the background and fortuitously happened to be revising this very subject now.

I'm torn on this subject. I can see the need for employees to take maternity leave, but I can also see the reasons why employers don't go a bundle on it. On balance of things, I think that it's a good thing that the provisions exist and think them to be, in the most part, fair. The low rate of SMP seems to be a good thing in this respect, almost encouraging new mothers to get back to work.

Beex: Helping out with studies by accident since 2008.

Aren't the laws designed to protect society etc? The people having babies are doing their bit to advance our race and should, technically, be revered as saviours.

In actuallity though, I do think that the laws are a bit harsh especially like you say, for small companies.

There's also laws saying that you can't make someone redundant who's on maternity leave and that's regardless of any restructure that may take place. Their job must be protected and be available for them when they get back.

I don't think anyone will be particularly shocked by my opinion. Having kids is a choice you make, and you shouldn't be entitled to either a protected job or X months of a taxpayer-paid salary for making that choice.

Unfortunately it does make for some underhand and unofficial sexism to creep in.
Say you own a small business that employs half a dozen people and advertise a position, two people apply and are equally suitable and come across equally well in an interview, one is a guy, the other is a woman of child bearing age. Who do you offer the job to?

Is she fit?

"Where do you see yourself in five years time?" is the best way around this problem, and good for heading off a potential claim.

What about paternity leave? Should it be equal to maternity leave?

Anyone planning to start a family in the near future who didn't outright lie in the response to that question wouldn't get the job on grounds of stupidity, let alone anything else.

Just going for the guy in the first place is the simpler solution...

No, I think the physical trauma of child birth alone justifies any discrepancy there.

Paternity leave is two weeks, to be taken in blocks of one week. You have to be an employee with at least 26 weeks service at 14th week before EWC, caring for the newborn/supporting the mother, be the father, husband or partner and responibility for upbringing. Same rights as OML on returning to work if isolated paternity leave or if leave is taken on top of other leave, same rights as AML. £124.88 per week.

Pre- and during- childbirth, certainly. But what about after? Must it be the mother that stays at home with the kid for the first six months?

No, and I think the law allows for that.
Paging Mali for the facts!

You can put in a request for a flexible working arrangement if you've had 26 weeks service, you are mother, father, adopter, guardian, foster parent or married to such person once in any 12 month period. If you expect to have responsibility for child and require flexible working hours to do this, or are a carer of adult dependent this request must be in writing, dated, state if a previous application has been made, state the change requested, the date of this change, the effect on the employer and how it would be overcome, and clarify the employee's eligibility. Within 28 days, the employer must arrange a meeting, inform the employee of the decision within 14 days of this meeting, allow an appeal hearing within 14 days after this and notify 14 days after that.

What about the Sale of Goods Act Amendment 23?

OK - But can you have maternity leave following the birth of your child. By which I mean 6 months off work at a statutory taxpayer funded salary, with a guarantee that your job will be there when you're done.

Of course, the downfall with removing the protection is that if clever career-type women (families would perhaps be a better word) decide not to have children because they want to keep their jobs, we end up with only the (I'm struggling to find a way to put this so that I don't come across as a snobbish arse) non-working people reproducing, and that's probably not a great thing.

Thing is though, if you're talented, and reasonably well-off, you can take 9 months off to have a kid, and you can find a job at the end of it without needing it to be guaranteed for you.

I think the protection is there for those that aren't those things.

I don't know - it'd be quite lucky for either of my colleagues to walk into a role equal to the one they have now. I'm not saying they couldn't do the work, but there's not much of a market at the moment.

That depends really, it might certainly deter some people from having kids. But I think Grim... has pretty much got to the fundamental reason why the laws are the way they are.

There's a woman at Miss Malabar's old work (a school) who keeps squeezing out kids with all sorts of behavioural problems. She's on her fourth now, with plans for at least one more, and totally cannot cope with them. In fact, in the rare times she's been in work over the past five years, she's been constantly complaining about them. It was driving her husband and her apart; the solution, of course: have another kid to bring you closer together.

I'm not sure if I have a real point here, but she makes me really fucking angry.

We have four people who work in our office. One has been off for four months on maternity leave, with another two to go. I've been doing her job while she's gone, as well as my own. I am very much looking forward to her return, but I don't begrudge her wanting to spend these months with her child. Even if it does mean I do two jobs and we don't have an office dog while she's not here.

Today I'm actually on my own, because Boss is working from home due to car issues and the other chap who works here is having an operation. Hey ho.

If you offer the legal minimum Maternity Pay then it's not such a massive drain on your business, and you will discourage people who want to get pregnant from joining your company.

So if you're concerned, then do that.

Does the company pay the maternity benefit or the taxpayer?

Not so.
Small companies can recover the statutory amount they have to pay from the government (or taxpayer, however you want to look at it). It's the cost of the people that come in at director-level for a short period to plug the gap that's crippling.

Also, with the law changing in April this year, fathers can take up to 6 months of the mother’s maternity leave but only after the mother has had at least 20 weeks of maternity leave. As such, if the mother returns at the earliest opportunity after 20 weeks, fathers can receive pay for up to the first 19 weeks of additional paternity leave followed by a further period of unpaid leave.

Part of that was cribbed from a press release, as I don't really know about this stuff.

Yes, that's for babies with EWC 3/4/2011, between two and 26 weeks weeks leave available if the mother has returned to work and the child is over 20 weeks.

Additional Paternity Leave Regulations 2010

Fascinating stuff isn't it? I work with HR and Health & Safety Consultants and I don't know whose job I envy least.

I've enjoyed learning about this sort of stuff, for sure. Nothing to do with the fact it's 19 women to every man in the class. oh no.

People in Sweden get even better deals than UK folks it seems.

Im covering some Swedish woman for a year now
No payrise. No real bonus. Just a glass trophy for "team work"...

In America, I believe, they only get two months.

Some people go off on maternity leave, get paid for not working, then change their mind about returning to work and quit. I'd be in a rage if I were their employer - one should be obliged to work for X months after returning or pay the leave money back, unless they have a sickly child that needs extra care, which is usually no-one's fault.

I tell you what really gets my goat though - I worked in a bank back office centre, 20-80 male-female ratio and every single week someone on my team of eight was off for a day with an ill child, so the rest of us work twice as hard as our performance measurements are on a percentage of the workload, whatever it may be. They get the day off, I get to miss lunch and still probably take a perfornmance hit, which affects my salary and promotion down the line. If only I'd been unionised in those times, and woe betide anyone who asks these women why their husbands (yes, they were all from stable family units) can't have a day off to watch the sprog cough instead.

In principle, I don't think a company should have to compensate a worker who decides to have a sprog either.

However. If you don't allow that, then women are effectively penalised for something that will not apply to men (yes, yes, men who are having a kid will also have a lot to do, I know, but it's really not the same thing). Which isn't at all fair, especially given how much women get shat on as it is.

So, my solution: If a woman is pregnant, the father has to do her job. If he already has a job, he has to cover the employer's costs with black market organ donation instead.

There are no flaws to this plan.


I probably shouldn't argue against maternity leave, though, as it's this that got me started on something resembling a proper job. It might just be because most places I've worked have been almost entirely staffed by women, but I swear everyone's dropping sprogs non-stop these days. Every other week it seems that someone else is off on the tyke bike.

If only (not her though, but some of her countries fine-ass womens)

Not at all. Women who chose to have a child are penalised for choosing to have a child. In fact, not even that. They aren't penalised, they just don't get to have paid leave and a guaranteed job at the end of it. Just like anyone else who chose to take 9 months off, male or female.

I didn't phrase that well at all, sorry. I meant, relative to men. They face that burden, while men don't. They suffer for choosing to have a child, where a man wouldn't (or would to a degree so lesser that it's barely worth comparing).

I once worked for a company who, unofficially of course, wouldn't employee 18-35 year old women in anything other than admin/secretarial roles precisely because they didn't want to deal with maternity leave and the issues surrounding it. That always struck me as a stupid move from a business point of view, not least because of the amount of talent that was simply ignored.

That was in stark contrast to some of the bigger outfits I'd worked at before (and since) who were very pro employee rights. But, even in the largest places, the whole thing seemed to be mismanaged - which usually led to a great deal of resentment from other staff.

It may be an old fashioned point of view, but I'm not really of the view that they should return to work after having a child. Seriously - what's more important - your child, or some crap job.

But of course, now, with the jobs - and so money - now having to go to roughly double the population that it used to, it's not so possible.

I can't help but think the two things might possibly be related, there.

I see your point. Personally speaking, I've always been very appreciative of the intelleckshull head-start I had being born to mother who had worked in a profession (psychicist-type science person). That was back in the days when mothers didn't need to work in order to save a family from starvation, so I got lots of nurturing and encouragement to learn and read and stuff.

In the modern era, dual-income households (i.e. both parents having to work) is the norm rather than the exception, so statutory maternity leave is essential, unless we want the demographic timebomb of drastically falling birthrates, which countries like Germany are suffering from due to their lack of social protection for working mothers.

They are obliged to work for a certain amount of time or they do have topay the money back.


Again, this is the law. You get 25 (I think) days to take off until the child is five.

I don't see how that's a major problem.

Yeah. You've the right to 13 weeks unpaid leave, if you've got a year's service, a child under five that you are responsible for and you are taking this leave to care for the child. You can take this in blocks on one week, with a maximum of four weeks per year, however the employer can postpone this if there's a sound business reason to not let you go. Terms and conditions are the same as AML.

You can also get unpaid time off, as long as it's reasonable to assist a person who is ill/injured, to arrange care for them, if a dependent has died, to care for a dependant after failed care or if it's a school incident.