AIBU to think that this is outrageous

[ModreB]

If this happens and firms are allowed to opt out of maternity and paternity leave

here

PrincessScrumpy the maternity laws benefit families - men as well. My DH did very nicely out of my ML thank you

An earlier post made the very good point that a HUGE proportion of employers employ less than ten people. What the government seem to be proposing is going to essentially do away with maternity and paternity rights altogether.

Another point that some people seem to be missing is that soon all fathers will have the right to take any part of the second six months as paternity leave. Are employers going to stop employing anyone who may decide to have a child?

I am horrified at the number of women who see maternity leave as a luxury, when in actual fact it is entirely necessary if we want to have any kind of family life with happy healthy babies! The government funds maternity and paternity leave, the inconvenience small businesses have to deal with is just another part of running a company, like paying tax. People need to get over it and stop complaining.

Women aren't just being selfish, wanting to have children for their own ends, they are providing the next generation, which will be caring for us all in our old age!

People need to get off this anti-maternity leave bandwagon that seems to have appeared since the recession began, and bloody alan sugar opened his big ignorant mouth.

I hate to spoil a good argument with fact, but if you are a small business, you can claim 104% of the cost back from - 3 guesses - the state! That's 100% for the cover person, and 4% for administration. So all the 'oh but maternity leave can ruin a small business' arguments suddenly look less convincing don't they?

I don't think maternity leave is a luxury. But I do think that nine months maternity leave is a luxury.

Even if small businesses can claim all the maternity pay back from the government, they have the hassle of trying to find a skilled employee to cover a temporary role (often impossible because who would leave a full time job for a temp role?) with all the advertising, training and extra cost that involves and the loss of productivity. That's why it kills the business, not the £140 or whatever they have to pay a week - which is of course reclaimed AFTER the business has paid it out, so tying up cashflow.

And that's why women are still being discriminated against in the workplace, because businesses won't take the risk of employing someone who might disappear for two years with a massive question mark over whether or not they are planning to return.

Let small businesses opt out and you instantly create hundreds of the kinds of jobs that we want - flexible, understanding, "mummy shifts". Because instead of being fearful of all the red tape of hiring an employee, and doing it themselves, the business owner has less risk involved and so will hire people. Often on part-time hours. Often able to be more flexible with one or two members of staff than tied to "company policy" or "the employee manual".

I don't think most small businesses are out to screw employees over - mostly they just want to get on with doing their job.

When will anyone disappear for "two years"? The entitlement is some pay from the state for 9 months then three months more unpaid, that's it.

Also confused as to why 9 months is so unreasonable. I don't understand why people keep referring to the US as an example of how to run a society, they have a terrible attitude to workers rights, they only get 10 days paid leave a year, ffs! Look to countries such as Sweden, they have higher taxes than us, but much more social benefits. They know how to look after their people, to the benefit of the whole society.

I don't think that 9 months maternity leave is a luxury if you are looking at infant attachment.
This is just another way in which this governement is trying to push women back into the home. Unless you happen to be a female lone parent, in which case you should be in the work house.

nightowlmostly You can takep to a year unpaid and also there's a distinct possibility that you might want to return part-time afterwards or need to do a handover beforehand and train the replacement. Most business owners I know budget 2 years for temp staff to cover maternity and immediately afterwards. As I said, it's not about the maternity pay for the business, it's about the fact that it's impossible to plan with the current system.

Sweden has an excellent system, but they also allow men to share the maternity leave so that the law doesn't encourage discrimination against women. Whatever laws you put in place, businesses still prefer not to hire women of childbearing age because of maternity.

I'm hoping the extension of paternity leave in the UK will even this out.

Interestingly the US has far more women in very senior positions than does Sweden for precisely this reason: they get back to work very quickly. There was a bit of a media flurry about this a few months ago when the survey results were passed.

It's not so much the money side of things that is hard for small businesses, it's the sheer hassle, if you're a service company like the ones I've worked for, where people build up relationships with company clients, then you have to introduce new faces, then reintroduce the old ones, then perhaps the client has got used to the maternity cover, only you can't afford to employ them both. So you reintroduce the original person after a year off but they are already pregnant with baby number two and it kicks off all over again seven or eight months later, just when things have settled down again. So you're swapping people on and off teams. Some clients really, really don't like that at all.

And here's the report I read about this surprising fact that the more generous the maternity rights, the less likely women are to reach the top, which is why women in the US are more likely to reach the top than women in Sweden.

THough, of course, lots of women work to pay bills, not necessarily because they want to reach the top.

northerngirl I have just had a look and can't find anywhere anything about having the right to take more than a year. Not saying you're wrong, but have you got a link to somewhere that says that? Am genuinely interested.

I too am hoping that making paternity more available will mean less discrimination of women in the workplace. Employers can't not employ everyone, right?

Funny how the objectors to maternity leave originally claimed it was too expensive for employers. Once that was demolished, they'd moved onto a new front, claiming poor old employers find it far too difficult to recruit people. Because clearly that's something employers never ever have to do apart from when women get pregnant. Hardly any employers have any experience in recruiting people, oh deary no. And no-one ever goes off long-term sick, so they never have to arrange temporary cover.

It's all just fairly thin excuses for prejudice and discrimation. And I have been the manager who arranges maternity cover, as well as taking maternity leave myself. My company didn't go bankrupt when I was off, and nor did my next employer when I had members of staff taking maternity leave. If maternity leave was the chief cause of business failure, I think we'd know about it.

nightowlmostly There was a European move afoot to extend the AML to two years. It has been knocked back a few times for amends, but is on the table for being approved.

edam what size of company was it? This relates to small business, under 10 people in total. And believe me, those small businesses need every hand on deck.

Even if it is predjudice and discrimination, surely there's a reason behind those predjudices? E.g. If there was no problem with the money and no problem finding and training a replacement and no problem settling the returning maternity leave back into their old job, what possible reason would there be to object to it? The fact is it's extremely difficult to accommodate these things as a small business, and mostly the business owner or other members of staff end up taking up the slack. It's not really a positive environment to come back to when you aren't feeling at your best anyway, when everyone else is dog-tired due to covering your work.

If you think you'd need the extended maternity leave, then it's simple - work for a big company who have the staff and resources to be able to cover it. If that's what the offer doesn't include maternity leave in the deal upfront, you always have the option of turning it down.

northerngirl so at present it is only a year? Why on earth are you saying there are lots of small businesses planning for two years off at the moment then?

Also, what is your solution to this problem? Not to allow working women to have children without fear of losing their job? The vast majority of companies in this country have 10 or less staff, so you are talking about disenfranchising a large percentage of the population.

Would you really have us go back to the fifties when we all had to stay home and rely on the goodwill of our (sometimes unlreliable) other halves to support us? Or what of single mothers, are they not going to be allowed to earn a living in a permanent post?

You seem to be forgetting that people need a reliable income to get mortgages and provide a stable home for their children. Most couples have a mortgage that relies on two incomes, so if one can be taken away any time do you really think they will be able to buy a home?

"when everyone else is dog-tired due to covering your work"
er, if you are on leave it is not your work at that time. It is someone else's work.
Women have the right to have employment. Nine months leave is not a long time. That's probably only seven or eight months post baby. Women make up half the population and almost half the workforce. People need to wise up to this. Men now almost expect women to go out to work to contribute to the income, but complain about making this possible!

Companies would go bust a lot sooner if there weren't all those women out there having babies. Where do they think their customers and workers come from, exactly, immaculate conception?

Scanned that Prospect article and good grief, it has more holes than my colander. "Research shows" without bothering to mention what research, by whom, when, and exactly what it apparently 'showed'. Quoting anonymous "surveys" that apparently supported the author's argument before maternity leave policies were introduced in Sweden, while carefully not mentioning what happened afterwards. Claiming that a highly performing school became a dumping ground because the head dared to go on maternity leave. Lazy bollocks that amounts to little more than 'my mate down the pub says it so it must be true'. (I'm a journalist and if I'd ever written anything so disingenuous, I'd do a much better job of covering it up.)

I've been scared to say it on MUMSnet, but I agree with Xenia that women who take full maternity leave hold feminism back. If/when my business picks up enough to employ someone, there's no way I could afford to hire & depend on somebody who might bounce off and take 6 months' leave. Either I need that person or I don't. If I can do without 'em for half a year, I don't need them and I wouldn't be employing them.

I welcomed the much-overdue change to statutory paternity leave, but I still think the majority of men will take token leave because they take their jobs seriously. I know that raising kids is a job, but as an employer that means you want 6 months off to do another job. I don't care if the government pays you, that doesn't put you on the end of my phone or my computer. It damages my business.

Large corporations have enough slack, or should have, to cope with extended absences. Little ones don't.

Just decided to answer a few of the above arguments from my pov, as this thread will be swarming by the time I get back to it (got work to do ...)

If an employee needs extended sick leave, my insurance would cover their absence and impact on earnings. No insurance company will cover that for pregnancy, except for post-partum complications when it becomes an illness.

It's not just about your wages, obv. If you're being employed it's because you improve profits. SMP doesn't even attempt to address that.

If couples used their shared leave to, say, take fortnightly turns at parenting it might be wearbale. But I don't think that's going to happen often.

I do not feel my business should suffer because of your personal life choices. Sorry.

Your baby's future contributions to the economy are immaterial to me and my business.

The report in question is the usual half-baked instant claptrap we're getting painfully used to. But the issue is a real, and past due airing, one imo.

My business is woman-centric. I will hire women past their menopause. I'd like to hire younger ones as well, but can't do that until this pregnancy malarkey is sorted out for the reasons in my last post.

Thanks for the link Abr1de- very interesting.

The following excerpt made for shocking reading- it wasn't the employers being inconvenienced but the children:

Take the example of a London secondary school, which recently appointed an energetic young head with a glowing reputation. But within four years the school was failing so badly that it had to be taken over. Part of the problem was that the new head had had two pregnancies, with two long spells of maternity leave, and then struggled to combine caring for two small children with a demanding full-time job. Although undoubtedly skilled, in practice she was unable to properly perform the role for almost four years. The school had, in effect, been headless.

"I welcomed the much-overdue change to statutory paternity leave, but I still think the majority of men will take token leave because they take their jobs seriously"

Bloody hell! I take my job very seriously thank you!

For all the people moaning about women in their business going off on leave - how many MEN do you employ whose partners have had babies. Struck lucky there didn't you?

"My business is woman-centric. I will hire women past their menopause. I'd like to hire younger ones as well, but can't do that until this pregnancy malarkey is sorted out for the reasons in my last post."
I'm sure you know you are acting illegally, but also despicably. Do you have children? Did you have maternity leave?

I think this is less of an issue about small businesses and more of an issue about the government and society's attitudes to maternity. You get paid maternity/paternity leave paid partly by the state because overall society needs to encourage people to have children. I can see the side of the argument about the costs and hassles for small businesses but the government should look for ways of making it easier for businesses to manage this rather than going the other way and stopping ML. i would imagine most people would check ML policy before taking a job, even if pregnancy wasn't on the near horizon. So these businesses will be giving up the opportunity to employ some talented women, just because they might have children one day,
Other countries such as Norway pay full pay for a year of ML and they seem to manage.

Garlic Butter please don't try and bring logic and common sense into this discussion. Its not about how we run our businesses to be fair and decent employers it why they can't keep living in their fantasy world. If a woman being pregnant causes problems in your business go to the cupboard GB get you magic thinking cap on a ohla it will all be resolved.