There should be a 9-month qualifying period for mat/pat leave.

[garlicgrump]

A few recent threads have made me think about this. I think it's hopelessly wrong that a woman can get a new job while knowing she's pregnant, then bugger off for a year's mat leave. AIBU?

The Doctrine i am not sure what you mean when you say "can your DH sell the business and himself too ie he doesn't get much for the business but remains doing his trade on a salaried basis?"

I guess there are different levels of being a small business. We are just a small business with a handfull or so of staff - no managing directors or senior teams, just a small family business. The place does get very busy and to be honest i think if the place had sold when it was up for sale it wouldn't survive long because my dh is the business if you see what i mean. He has the kind of attitude where he is happy to make a good living but he isn't greedy so tends to keep the prices lower thus way we get so busy because people get value for money. I could see a new person coming in and putting all the prices up and shooting themselves in the foot because they get too greedy. Alot of people get put off because they look at the business and want to just run it from a managment view but it is a hands on job so whoever bought it has to have the trade experience and be hands on - they couldn't just run it from an office somewhere and not get their hands dirty.

Oh, I meant that the buyer would employ your DH, so he'd get to do the job but have fewer worries. Of course that might not work.

Also i don't begrudge maternity leave or sickness leave and i don't think many do per se but it's when people take the piss that people are bothered about - small businesses in particular are very vulnerable when people take the piss because they don't have the fall back like big companies.

For instance an employee who had a key role in the business ie: without someone doing his job the business won't function, went off with backache and was on SSP. 2 days before his SSP ended he called up and said he was better and could come back to work.

Now i understand that people have backache and it's horrible when you have it, but it seemed odd that this man had made a miracle recovery 2 days before his sick pay was ending. So we decided to go down the route of writing to his doctor to get it confirmed he was ok to return to work because it is a manual job with some heavy lifting (unavoidable to do the job) and a lot of twisting to your back too. He had laid it on so thick about his back for 6 months we had to be sure he was fit for the job.

When you write to an employees doctor the employee has the right to see and edit the questions first. Well the employee was very angry that we were writing to his doctor and thought we were trying to prove he wasn't really ill when actually we were quite within our right to prove he was fit enough for the job which is what we were doing, not trying to prove he ^wasn't" ill. He handed in his notice over it and if staff seeing him out and about he tells them he was good as sacked which wasn't true at all.

Through one of my dhs friends a few months later my dh was told said employee had come into some inheritance money around the time he went off sick and dhs friend had also seen the employee playing golf several times a week over the past year.

Whether he had backache or not we will never know but i am pretty sure playing golf would play havoc on a bad back...

TheDoc - i see what you mean and for some that works, such as the newsagent up the road was sold but the old owner was kept on as an employee. Unfortunatly that wouldn't work for us, plus my dh does over 60 hours a week which also puts people off because it's very early starts and late finishes rather than a 8/9am - 5/6pm type role.

so op you want women returning to work 2 weeks post partem? is that what you are saying? because if you are saying there should be a 9 month qualifying period before being entitled to mat leave then what do you suggest happens to the women who are pregnant when they start a job? (it isn't illegal to accept a job whilst pregnant- thank fuck!) do you suggest those women either leave the job permanentley meaning more recruitment for the company or that the return to work 2 weeks after the birth?

so op you want women returning to work 2 weeks post partem? is that what you are saying?

No

so what then? being sacked?

you dont want women returning to work after 2 weeks since giving birth but you dont want them having any maternity leave. i'm struggling with this one tbh. what is it you think should happen?

Yabu.

no chocolate - it was your attitude of being hard done to when your employee is going for an operation - hardly sounds like piss taking or taking advantage.

yes some people do take the piss but this attitude to all sickness or maternity due to a few twats is wrong. And if your staff feel essentially accused of piss taking due to sickness because a few years ago Dave with the bad back was obviously pulling the lead then a happy working atmosphere would be lost - it's called good will and it can in return breed good will and loyalty.

there are plus side and negatives to having your own business - if you don't like it close shop and look for employment

Whilst I agree that this stuff is hard on small businesses I think government should find ways to support small businesses rather than make women feel guilty for the fact they bear children.

Society (or government) has decided that women bearing children is a good thing; it has also decided women working us a good thing and has found a way to support women in bearing and caring for babies and then being able to return to work. We also realise that there is a lot of uncertainty in childbearing that makes a time limit unrealistic. There is a time limit on SMP that employers often use for contractual pay. When on mat leave you have the right to return to your job, or a similar one - there is flexibility there for employers. When you become an employer you do have to bear in mind that employees can leave you, at whatever notice is specified, leaving during mat leave is no different.

Yy lolly

Maddening I do not think said employee is taking the piss for having an operation, how horrible would that be. The annoyance is you would know well in advance that you up for an operation, especially the kind he is having, so telling your employer a week before knowing your employer would be working nights as well as trying to do their already 12 hour day and has a young family at home is wrong.

We try to work as a team so when one does this it effects everyone, not just my dh.

It is your attitude I hate - fuck the employer, they don't matter because I am entitled to it type thinking. We are human too with families at home you know and if it were me I would have told my employer months ago I was up for an op and told them as soon as I knew when it was and gave them all the information I could, especially if I worked for a small family business who have very young kids at home to think of.

So yes attitudes do matter - for the employee too.

Also I am sure if I started a thread asking employers of all business sizes to list all the piss takes they have had from employees regarding sickness it would be a long one.

"dave with the bad back" is not just the only one.

Chocolate, I do see your point. But if, say, someone had needed to be let go between when the employee notified you and when their name came up on the NHS waiting list, might it have played a factor in the decision?
Not necessarily at your workplace but at some people's. All the Dave with a bad back stories have counterparts in different organisations where someone has been treated badly by an employer. Which is why the only way it can be handled is to set out employer and employee rights in law and stick to them- anything more than that is a bonus.

It's a bit like Sheryl Sandberg saying "discuss your plans for children with your employer" - a good thing to do if your employer is good, a bad thing if not.

I can't speak for other businesses but in ours there are two key roles i:e the ones who do the skilled production then there are the other staff who work in the shop. Said employee is a key worker - in this trade they are rare as rocking horse shit so when you get one you don't get rid nor are they easily replaced. So if he had said months ago we could have prepared, made arrangments etc for his leave and he wouldn't have been let go of because he was up for an op.

A number of years back an employee who worked in the shop was up for a knee op. She told my dh, kept him up to date and there was an awful lot of good will about it because everyone knew where they were on it. She had the op, recovered, came back and all was ok.

When staff come to work for dh they tend to stay for years. We have had some in and out staff but the majority become part of the place and customers love to see the same faces and they get to know the customers etc. Everyone is a team which is why everyone gets annoyed when someone lets everyone down.

Another one here who agrees with Lollydaydream

If women stop having babies, our species will become extinct. Women make up 51% of the population.

Having children should have no more effect on a woman's career and earning potential than it does for a man's. Presently that's not the case.

It's unfortunate that this can negatively affect some employers, but what's the solution other than to make the female half of the population suffer? As a society we have to find ways of allowing our species to have the advantages of procreation (survival of the species, future generations to make up a workforce and pay tax), without penalising only the one half of society involved in that process.

Fathers who are sole/primary carers often report the same detrimental effect on their careers as women, but what they don't suffer from is the disadvantage of being perceived as "of childbearing age" with all the negative consequences that has on a woman's career before she's even pregnant.

Apart from the initial physical recovery period, I'd like to see the abolition of maternity leave and see it replaced with parental leave, so that a man who starts a new job with his wife 6 months pregnant could opt to take it and be the primary carer while his wife returned to work post partum.

IMO that would do more to remove the disadvantages faced by women than anything else. Until men and women face the same choices about career v parenthood, society is not treating women fairly.

well firstly chocolate - my attitude has never been "fuck the employer" - I was in my last job for 11 years (applied for voluntary redundancy when they offered it out as business up for sale) - I was rarely ill, I worked much unpaid overtime, I worked hard.

You, however have an extremely aggressive attitude to your employees/ employees in general v unpleasant and unsympathetic. It is likely that they were on a waiting list and a cancellation came up - but by the fact that your employee "Wouldn't answer" re his expected return post op indicates that you as employers are not pleasant to approach about such things - good employers manage to maintain good relationships with their employees.

Well he wasn't pinned down and threated to answer if he wasn't coming back! Me, aggressive, yeah right. I am probably the least threatening, aggressive person one could meet. I have only met him once because he works nights. My dh went in and had a polite chat with him, the employee has no idea I am annoyed and it isn't something I would express to him if I saw him. My dh asked casually if thought he would be coming back or not, not in a "you must tell me now" type of way. No poking at his ribs to get an answer!

We have long term staff, the staff seem happy, they gets lots of perks and my dh is very generous with free lunches, christmas cash bonus, all of christmas and new year off, every weekend off, every bank holiday off plus lots more. We get loyalty because he is a fair boss but can get taken advantage off. I have gad so tend to be more anxious about everything anyway. We will survive, our situation has been worse.

Also, we have had staff work for 24 years, 22 years and the lady who just retired and is greatly missed was with us for 15 years. So we must be doing someting right - I a even held a member of shop staffs job open so she could have a 2 month in australia on holiday unpaid over and above her entitled holiday allowance. She expected to give her notice because it is a long time to have off on top of normal leave but I insisted she had a job when she got back because she was lovely and she is still there now 6 years later. Real mean I am.

Choc, I am a small employer and it can be difficult. I do see posters talk about their employer like they aren't human and forgetting that employee and employers both have rights and responsibilities.

Mr bad back seems like a pita. I have no idea how you become less dependant on him but this seems necessary.

My main problem which I recently seem to have resolved: I am a young looking female employer in a very technical role and used to find it difficult to get male staff to accept my guidance in solving technical problems (even though I had more relevant experience). (1) i used to try to convince them I was right, now I give them the reasons why we need to do x, y , z but if they start to disagree, I listen to them, see if we need to change the plan, but if not, just say I have heard their comments, but I have said what is a happening and we need to move on (2) I put together a company handbook and put lots of thought into the section about what constitutes misconduct. This means I can fairly easily and fairly get rid of bad staff. Also we have a clear holiday booking process.

Did mr back backs operation comply with your holiday policy? If it did, I don't think there is any solution. If it did, I would emphasis you are doing him a favour and next time he needs to let you know sooner so the business doesn't let clients down.

Can you split up mr bad backs role, or give parts of it to others? It sounds like its just a matter of time before he does something else.

I can think of quite a few situations whereI need medical treatment that would require time off at short notice and that I might not want to discuss with my boss. I have a right to a private life, and ifI was confident my boss was going to go home and discuss it with his wife, I might not be so keen to let them know it was happening that far in advance.

if course you have a right to a private life - don't we all?

but you also have obligations under your employment contract. one of the reasons you have obligations is that your employer needs to plan so that the business can function.

you could just book an operation as holiday and no one need by any the wiser. you could resign from your role and no one need by any the wiser. but if you want your employer to do you a favour, they are going to need to know why. they also have obligations to your health and safety so need to know for this reason.

I think the starting point for each party is to act reasonably and expect to be treated reasonably. of course some people aren't...

if you want your employer to do you a favour = approve a holiday with less notice than company handbook states is required.