Most people think maternity leave should be abolished?

[PlomBear]

I am very pro parental leave but reading comments here www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-7891605/amp/Sacked-having-baby-Scores-firms-pushing-female-staff-falling-pregnant.html I’m wondering if most people are anti pregnant women?

“It's a huge burden on small businesses, which is why I don't employ women who are young enough, but don't have children. My business couldn't stand paying someone to be off and employ someone else to take their place temporarily and then as we all know, the majority once you've paid them up, choose not to come back.”

“In my day when you were pregnant you gave up your job to bring up your child.”

“Its completly unfair to be made to hold a job open for a woman to have her baby. Its the womans chose so why should an employer be punished. The law is an ass.”

“Mothers should be with their children looking after them and teaching them to be future good adults, It's a choice children or career not both.”

“I think that companies should be able to put a clause in their contracts to say if they fall pregnant in the first 5 years then they forfeit the right to maternity pay and leave and are breaking their contract. Why should companies have to keep jobs open for them to may or may not return. I have never had children so never entitled to time off or maternity pay at the end of the day you choose to have children and this can be timed to not affect a job. Also they are taking a job and money from someone else.”

Reading the comments I feel like I’m back in the 1950s when teachers and nurses had to be unmarried!

my employer has equal parental leave for men and women.

If you substitute 'parent' or 'people' for mother and women, then you can at least discuss the ideas behind the comments without boaking.

Lol - it's in the DM.

Move along folks, nothing to see here.

Daily Heil in misogynistic article shocker.

Its readers are a special bunch indeed.

Most of us work to live, not live to work.... any employer who doesn't not want to accept it is not an employer I'd like to work for. It's not a burden on businesses, it's a reality of life. Whatever next - don't employ smokers, in case they get ill from a smoking related illness and we have to pay them sick pay?? Or just ask employees take a health test to work out if they're fit and healthy and won't be needing any time off due to sickness it's a reality of life - babies, health problems, elderly parents.... does it make us any worse at being good workers??? No!!
People have children, not just women..... And we all have parents, ( even those who are anti kids were children themselves once!!) so ask your parents what would they have preferred - a better career or us? I think you all know the answer!!!!

@Utini I’ll get my application in!

In all honesty I don’t envisage requiring maternity again but my presumption of the low uptake of shared leave and paternity leave (there’s a very low percentage of men in my social circle who truly took a full two weeks off) is more to do with work place cultures and pressures rather than men not wanting to utilise what’s available. I would presume aviva have a very rare culture compared to what is more prevlant.

It won't be abolished even with the current misogynist Prime Minister we have.

Though it is sad even if only a small percentage did not want it.

I agree that there should be a reasonable length of maternity leave; however, I think it is hard on employers when you have a serial mother who has maybe only been with the company a year or so and then, in real terms, never comes back and expects to be paid!! I certainly do not agree that fathers should have up to a year off, fully paid. Nonsense.

But SMP comes from the government not the employer themselves. The employer is not losing any money

This is true. But you have to spend money/time advertising and recruiting a replacement. You have to train that person up. Many businesses have a handover period before the pregnant employee leaves so they are paying both salaries. They have to pay holiday pay to people on maternity leave, and their maternity leave cover too. And if the position has benefits such as a car, phone etc, you have to allow the person to keep all that while they're on maternity leave. They still have to be paid a bonus even though they're not working. So in many situations it DOES cost. And then there are all the laws covering pregnant women which mean they get paid time off for appointments.

Now I'm not saying any of that is wrong, but saying maternity leaves don't cost businesses is not true either.

Personally, I think the basic protection needs to be there. I have however also seen lots of threads by women having back to back maternity leaves and trying to plan things so they are back at work 5 minutes and off on leave again. Or not back at all.

I suspect that a lot of these people are going to get their wish once rules and regulations are torn up after Brexit.

This in spades. And it will be people on the lower end of the salary scale, people who are more easily replaced, who will suffer. Join a union, vote Labour and hope for the best.

Part of the reason I’ll be going back to the Civil Service is the great maternity leave and family friendly policy. I think it’s something like 6 months full pay then SMP. I envision working there for a few years so they’ll get their money’s worth from me! After all, that is their policy and one has to be there a certain amount of time otherwise it’s just SMP. It’s hardly like I’m cheating them.

I actually think mothers on Maternity Leave should get their full salary including any payments into works contrib pension scheme for the whole 12 months.

It’s not the Stone Age afterall. Going back to work became the norm years ago everywhere other than Daily Mail land

Fuck the daily Mail. Racist sexist homophobic cancer of a tabloid.

Most people do not think this.
Maternity leave benefits firms with very highly skilled workers, but not most firms. Which is why most women in the US do not get maternity leave or get very little. Breastfeeding rates are higher in the US.

But we do lots of things because it is the right thing to do. This is one of them.

An insightful post, PineappleDanish. LIke yourself I wouldn't suggest that the current arrangements are wrong, only that they have consequences ... and sadly, one of those is that the more provision is put in place, the more employers there'll be who try to avoid women of childbearing age

A shame, really, that take-up of paternal leave / sharing of leave is so low overall, but at least this is something that mums might hopefully be able to influence?

Very worrying that articles like this are appearing in the press.

Once we've left Europe, the Tories will be keen to tear up our workers rights (and human rights) as soon as they think they can get away with it, in the name of "reducing red tape" or " making Britain competitive" or some such.

This kind of thing is about testing the public mood, I think.

Didn’t they only get three weeks in the states

I can see this from both sides... as a small business we could not afford to sustain maternity pay, but we also can not really afford to sustain sick pay, holidays etc. We are struggling just to maintain minimum wage to be honest and we are not a struggling business.
I think the government should pick up the costs, not businesses (small ones anyway).
However, I do not have an issue with women having time off for babies and think it's really important. I had lots of time off with my babies and it was invaluable. As a business we can manage time off, we can't manage paying 2 people for one job

I agree posts like this are testing the water.

What about the benefits of employing women? Our experiences allow us to relate to other women in the same situation as ourselves, opening up ideas, and markets that wouldn't necessarily occur to men. It may appear to cost more to cover maternity, but those women who take it up have experiences to draw on that others who can't or haven't.

Has anyone else read "Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men" by Caroline Criado Perez?

If you asked the DM readers anything 98% of those that comment would rail against it. The people that write comments on that site are fucking batshit.

I don't understand where all these people live. I don't know anyone that thinks like this. I have friends in the US who dread women coming back to work so soon as they're basically zombies and it's really not good for little children to be in nurseries. There were a couple of deaths a few years ago as tiny, tiny babies were left in babyseats for too long and suffocated.
However, I also although don't know anyone who feels anything negative about the Duchess of Sussex being mixed race.

I do however know plenty of people who voted out of Europe.

I don’t read the Daily Mail to avoid having a stroke.

It’s the Daily Mail. The comments section attracts the type of people who would be considered ‘odd’ IRL and retired colonels. Their obsessions are the royal family, hating women, foreigners, immigrants, young people and women. Their lives haven’t turned out the way they wished and they are bitter so lash out at others. They love DM comments as they can congregate with other strange people and not feel so alone.

As they say, ‘misery loves company’. I wouldn’t pay them any mind.

I envisage there being absolutely no regulation whatsoever – no minimum wage, no maternity or paternity rights, no unfair dismissal rights, no pension rights – for the smallest companies that are trying to get off the ground, in order to give them a chance,” she suggested.

Andrea Ledsom is a magnificent idiot. No small company should be getting off the ground on the backs of its workers. Nor should they have any exemptions from workers rights laws.

I know someone who has views exactly like the DM comments. She is a devout Christian, and a judgy unpleasant person, who rarely has a kind word to say about anyone.