To think that this 'advice' column in today's Guardian is bang out of order?

[Aliama]

I'm fuming at this and wondering if I'm overreacting?

www.theguardian.com/money/2014/feb/01/dear-jeremy-work-issues-solved

Excuse me? Did I misread that? In what fucking world is it 'reprehensible' for a woman to fail to tell a prospective employer that she's planning on getting pregnant at an interview? Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it fucking illegal for a company to allow something like that to sway their decision anyway, even if said woman is already pregnant?

Ugh.

The disability issue I referred to was about accommodating people with disabilities and making reasonable changes to your premises. Not about discrimination.

Never mind

Failing to make reasonable adjustments is disability discrimination. They are not separate things. The reasonableness of any particular adjustment will of course depend on the resources of the employer along with other factors but there's no exemption for small employers. And if, for example, you have an employee who is absent long-term owing to disability, dismissal of that employee will amount to discrimination arising from disability unless you can justify if (and thay justification can't be based solely on cost). So discrimination as defined in the Equality Act is broader than you might think. Anyway, I don't want to derail the thread. Someone else has already come on to say that they run a business with a similar number of employees without 'boycotting' women of childbearing age.

I work for a company that has shared parental care policies, and most of the new dads take a few months off, with many taking the second six. It's not a small company, so it doesn't cause any particularly significant headaches, but does show that when shared parental leave is normalised (and there are no stigma attached) fathers are likely to take advantage.

I've also applied for a job when pregnant. I didn't say anything until I was offered the job, when effectively they couldn't withdraw the offer. All very reprehensible I suppose. However they didn't tell me that they were in the process of merging, that the job location would be changing or that there would probably be layoffs. Why should the prospective employee have to disclose everything when the employer does not?

For those that think I was ever so wicked, I put in place lots of prep work before I left and only took three months out (and only had SMP). When I moved on to a new job a few years later I was told how productive I had been (and the job I went on to was to replace a very ineffective guy). Plus dh has taken more time off as a SAHD then I have (I don't enjoy being at home) and has never been asked about it.

RichPetunia but you can't tar everyone with the same brush. I have had 4 in 6.5 years and have doubled my salary in the same timescale - I wouldn't have achieved that by not pulling my weight (and more) at work. I'm not resigning!

Winky you don't seem to get that some of us have been victims of your discrimination (not personally, in a different industry). After being kicked back for fairly spurious reasons several times I actually decided I'd be better off not waiting to have children and have set up as an independent consultant.

But not every woman has the means and attitude to do that.

If you are offering employment then by law there are certain characteristics you are not allowed to discriminate on. Call it economics, the country won't cope if all capable and motivated women decide not to have children.

WindyMiller What do you do when one of your male employees want to take 6 months paternity leave? Surely it's discrimination to pay a woman 75% maternity leave but not a father the same in paternity leave? And have you offered any of your 6 men part-time work when they become fathers? Or do you claim its not possible to do your work part time and so don't employ women because if you let a woman work part time you might actually have to let your men work part time as well. Maybe you shouldn't employ any men of childbearing age in case they want to go part time. Here's a solution: only employ women post 40 and no men (because they are fertile all their lives and so potentially could ask to go part time at any age).

TBH I'm really not convinced that any job that has clients is a problem to do when working part time. The solution at our work is to have fewer clients to reflect your shorter hours. I can easily email clients at funny hours from home to let them think I'm always available. After all, if you are busy with one client, then you are neglecting another. Why is that any different to having to spend certain hours looking after children? I don't know why employers like you look at parenting different from any other commitment. I'm as committed to work as the men who, e.g., work as a magistrate one day a week. Actually I'm probably more committed, after all it's quite hard to find part time work so my employer knows that yes, having to find cover for up to a year for a senior member of staff is a pain, but on the other hand they are unlikely to leave so the few months maternity leave (when we can trial new employees and decide if we want to keep them on if they are any good - another positive) can be balanced against a loyal employee for years. Of course, I work for an employer that is growing, so maybe your problem is that you are a small and struggling microbusiness that isn't able to accommodate any change because you aren't expanding. But hey, let blame the wimmin for having babies without any input from men at all...

Plan your family, your work can and will wait.

Your work might, yes, but my million pound research study won't. I once employed a Research Fellow who was amazingly qualified and experienced, only for her to go off on maternity leave for a year 6 months after getting the job. I can't tell you how much that screwed up my 3 year project.

Never again.

Never again what? Yes, terrible for you. But any employee could resign, or be diagnosed with cancer, or any number of things.

seezeek

There are plenty of unforeseen circumstances that could render someone unable to work for a long period of time. It comes with the territory I'm afraid.

Or zeezeek even

I think zeezeek has a point there - from experience it is damn hard to get research funding, and someone going off like that could well affect zeezeek's chances of obtaining another grant, and that could ultimately end in zeezeek's redundancy ... that's academia these days.

Of course, there are any number of unforeseen circumstances that may make someone leave, agreed. But let's not pretend that someone taking maternity on a 3 year project is always manageable for those left behind.

Having said that, the wider problem is total lack of permanent jobs these days ... then parental leave would just be a drop in the ocean of a long career.

Yes, it's damn hard to get research funding.

It's damn hard to get a postdoc or a junior lectureship, too. Imagine how much harder it is if we allow people to discriminate against women who might have children so they can further their own research and careers ... oh, no, wait, that's the situation we already have.

I understand where zeezeek is coming from. But I don't condone what she wants to do.

So... anyone running a small business should know how to deal with maternity leave issues so it doesn't affect the business financially? OK, please give me the benefit of your advice.

I have been running my own small business for 13 years. As it happens, the staff are all female (because they happened to be the best people for the job). My key member of staff has been on maternity leave twice over the past three years. I understand the SMP thing - as a small business, we get it reimbursed by the government and get a small contribution towards the admin costs as well - so no financial problem there except, if course, for how you cover a specialised post for nine months at a time.

But what I absolutely don't get is why, when the staff member comes back from maternity leave, she has accrued annual leave for the nine months she was on paid maternity leave. In a business like mine which works by charging out its staff time to clients, the only way to cover annual leave costs is to charge out the time at a rate which covers a proportion of annual leave costs too. However, if a member of staff isn't working, there is no way of generating money from her time to cover her annual leave costs. (The temporary cover's charge-out rate covers her annual leave costs only.)

The result is that I am currently working extra hours myself to cover the costs of the annual leave my member of staff has accrued while she has been on maternity leave. And as far as I can see, this will be the case any time a member of staff goes on maternity leave.

So what am I doing wrong? This is a genuine question BTW. Am I supposed to raise our charges to my clients to cover this cost - because if I do, the market is so competitive that we will probably lose our contracts. And the cost of funding 4-6 weeks annual leave in a small business is not insubstantial.

I am not a sexist employer. I am genuinely happy to see my staff having babies, we have flexible and home working to try to make things as easy as possible, and I invest a lot in helping my staff achieve their potential for their benefit and that of my business. I have two young children myself. But this issue of accrued annual leave entitlement really puzzles me. I can see that it isn't an issue in large businesses but for a small business like mine it does bite a bit. And I can see why it would put off another small business from employing staff who might go off and have babies.

Perhaps one of the posters above with expertise in running small businesses could put me right... Or am I just another worthless loser who runs her own business and deserves all she gets?

I was actually going to help you out there until the last paragraph.

A close friend of mine was seconded for a year onto a research project just like you describe, zeezeek - two months in she discovered she had acute leukaemia and was then off work for eight months and only part time for the final two of the secondment. I have colleagues who have had breast cancer, fibroids, older colleagues who have needed heart ops or knee replacements, one who was in hospital for nine months (more than most people's mat leave) because his horse rolled on him.

Things happen. Employers, PIs, whatever, have to accept that people get ill, circumstances intervene, things don't always go perfectly. That doesn't mean we shouldn't have employment rights protecting us. (People don't always get pregnant on purpose, either - should every childbearing woman be on the pill to save her employer being inconvenienced? I ended up pregnant through genuine contraceptive failure, so what was I supposed to do?)

For every person on your research project who went on mat leave, you might end up in later life taking a period of sick leave to recover from all sorts of possible illnesses. But presumably you don't think a senior prof who's a PI on a research grant should be chucked off it or lose his job because he's off for a long time having some cancer treatment or a heart op?

scone, when you started that small business ... you knew women had children, right? You even knew there were laws about it?

So surely this doesn't come as a shock to you, that women, well, sometimes have children.

We're talking about an article where it's claimed it is 'reprehensible' for women not to notify employers if they're pregnant or planning to become so. The onus is all on those women.

So how come there's no onus on you to research your business, too?

sconequeen AFAIK the annual leave entitlement is there just because the contract and all associated benefits carries on as usual - if these didn't accrue then technically the employer would have changed the contractual terms.

I was on mat leave for 18 weeks though and only accrued about 8 days' leave (I forget the exact number but it gave me an additional just less than two calendar weeks), and I have reasonably generous holiday entitlement. Do your employees take much more maternity leave than that? 8 days isn't too massive an amount for an employer to fund; most employees probably take at least that in sickness during a year. I don't know many people who took more than 4-5 months, apart from my sister who got an unusual 6 months on full pay (public sector); I honestly don't know anyone who could afford to take more than the paid period if mat leave!

I do think the accruing annual leave thing is a bit silly. In my view maternity leave and benefits are over the top now. But they are far far lower for the self employed, meaning that they often have to manage without actually taking any significant maternity leave.
The length of maternity leave is supposedly related to how good it is for the child to be with the one dedicated carer for the first year. Presumably there's research behind that, though my personal experience suggests very young children at a good nursery or childminder do fine.

Statutory mat pay is 90% for 6 weeks then around £137/week for 33 weeks Dromedary (and has only recently gone up from 125/week). Most people I know can't afford to take long after the 90% (or fully-paid period if you have it via your employer). Does that sound massive? It's certainly a lot less than in almost any other European country.

I don't think anyone thinks it's a fab idea for a baby for its mum to go back to work after 6 weeks. I don't think the baby's welfare is what determines maternity leave entitlements....

Thanks train and Dromedary for understanding the point I'm making.
Maybe my situation is unusual but my staff have all taken the full 9 months paid maternity leave which leaves me with 4+ weeks of accrued annual leave plus public holidays to pay for each time. If they took the full 12 months leave (ie including three months unpaid leave), as I understand it, I would have 6+ weeks accrued annual leave to pay for.

Don'toutme: Yes, I do know women have children and I've had two myself since I started my business. I researched running my own business and I have actually been quite good at it - it's being going for 13+ years and generates a living for a number of families. I do know about maternity rights too and I don't have any problem whatsoever with them either. In fact I go out of my way to make my business family-friendly. But the accrued leave thing baffles me because it just doesn't seem to make sense. It costs employers money (ie it is not subsidised by the government) and my experience is that most women don't even know that it is an entitlement so it comes as a bonus to them.

I'm not actually commenting on whether a woman should say at interview if they are pregnant or ttc because I know and respect the law on that, and I understand the reasons for the law. I'm just making the point that as things stands at present there is a cost to employers and that, while larger organisations may be able to absorb it, it is more difficult for very small businesses. In my case what it boils down to in terms of accrued leave at the moment, in fact, is that my two young children are seeing considerably less of me because I am having to work longer hours to pay for someone else's maternity entitlement. I also have the uncertainty of not knowing until virtually the last minute if the member of staff intends coming back to work. I'm not sure that some of the posters on this thread actually understand some of the real-life implications of maternity legislation for very small businesses and, from listening to media debates, I don't think that many equal opportunities campaigners do either.

sconequeen I appreciate that these entitlements may feel disproportionately unfair on small businesses, but society is all connected - we should all be grateful that people have children (who will be paying for our own pensions and so on later on). Why though does maternity leave attract such controversy when sick leave doesn't? Compare the birth rate and demographic profile of the UK and I'm sure you'd find that there are a lot more people getting ill in most companies than having babies (thinking of my own organisation, about one person has a baby every year or two years, but the age profile of the employees is such that several people per year are off on medium or long term sick leave for various reasons). Most employers offer more generous sick pay than statutory. But you don't hear loads of complaints from employers about how sick pay cripples small businesses. Is it that only women take maternity leave and complaining about maternity leave is a socially acceptable form of discrimination against women? Is it the perceived element of choice, the idea that many people have that "children are a lifestyle choice", that makes the difference? Whereas (to be deliberately controversial ) one could say that in funding maternity leave a business is actually directly paying for something socially useful and needed; whereas shelling out for sick pay because John from accounts is having an angioplasty because he spent 40 years smoking, drinking and eating rubbish seems not even to be worthy of comment.

(BTW I'm certainly not suggesting that we should be doing away with paid sick leave; merely asking why maternity leave attracts all the disapproval and hand-wringing.)

If you take a male and female employee with same qualifications and age, the woman is likely to have to work an additional 26 months to earn the same as the man over their working lives due to gender pay inequality. She is also likey to be on mat leave for about 20 months, enabling her employer to reclaim some money from the govt.

Making the woman cheaper to employ over the course if her working life.

Figures based on 2012 data.

I would post more but have to finish a paper for the MA I am soon on this subject.