Raging about shared parental pay - has anyone challenged this (vs mat leave policy)

[Soundbathfan]

The nhs mat policy whilst better than many is much crapper than many too
My husband gets better mat leave in his medium sized private tech company than I do.
His company don't have a shared parental pay policy which I am angry about. He has asked about this and has been sent a shared parental leave notification form but this doesn't include anything about pay (which I'm assuming will be stat rate)
Other similar companies to his DO offer comparative mat and parental pay.
Has anyone ever challenged an employer on their offer and lack of comparability to mat policy?
He is the first person ever to have asked about this in his male dominated organisation
Thanks for any advice you have :)

Exactly - so when people are saying it makes sense because shared parental leave is taken by the non birthing partner, they’re forgetting that the mother who gave birth is also impacted by the policy if they want to take SP!

We work for the same university. The policies are the same, but it depends on what leave the mother gives up for SPL, you have to specify the weeks.

So, I took 9 months, of which I think 6 months was enhanced. I gave DH month 10, but that was paid in line with month 10 of the maternity policy, which is statutory at that point.

I thought that was a fair enough way of doing it.

This exact scenario is why it’s so important to retain the words “mother “ and “woman” and “ father” and “man” etc . So everyone is clear who we are talking about. Only mothers give birth and mat pay is for them. Fathers get paternity pay. Nothing to stop a company improving this but it’s not sex discrimination to give mothers more as they are the sex that give birth and women should not be arguing it is!

My husband was the face of the operation, I was very much the puppetmaster in the background! I briefed him on the outcome we wanted, and the strategy we needed to get there, and he went off to talk to the right people.

Birthing parent and non-birthing parent is fine for this. Assuming a mother and a father is discriminatory against same sex couples (specifically lesbians).

Yeah its annoying but not surprising, given the fact my partner wasn't the one pregnant for 9 months nor pushed a child out of his body and nursed them for the first year of life.

My partner also only gets stat paternity pay. It's very common in many private companies with a good maternity pay package. I wish it was better but i'm not surprised it isn't. Was he not aware of this before taking the job??

I challenged my company as some specialists have a completely different maternity policy (different contracts). They get 39 weeks paid OMP the rest of us get statutory. I was told “tough”. So no, I’ve not challenged paternity.

This is one of the scenarios where birthing parent and non birthing parent make sense. Obviously the birthing parent will always be a mother, but the non birthing parent can be a mother too.

Therefore makes little sense to say “mothers get x pay” when that’s not always going to be the case. Although of course most people will know you’re referring to the mother who gave birth, most policies are more generically written than that.

Plus, as I keep saying, the mother who gave birth can also take Shared Parental Leave.

Shared parental leave is broken and ineffective in this country as can be seen by people having to negotiate between employers with vastly different levels of occupational pay. It is no surprise that take up rates are so poor. This is continuing to cause issues for women in the workplace as a result.

We need to move towards the Scandinavian system where both parents get decent levels of leave so that men being caregivers in early years is normalised in our society.

For lesbians have mother and non birthing mother.
So paternity pay can be for both fathers and non birthing mothers.
No need to change the wording for maternity pay at all. maternity pay is not affected by what a company does for fathers/ non birthing mothers.
Only the mother gives birth and gets the maternity pay and that should be better and longer than whatever the paternity pay might be.

YABU in the sense that you knew your situation(s) but then still chose to get pregnant and are now “raging” about it. It doesn’t sound on the face of it that the employer are doing anything illegal. It’s not discriminatory to better financially support the person who has grown another human and birthed them. It’s not discriminatory to ensure that the person who is typically most disadvantaged in terms of finances, free time and career progression gets a better deal than someone who typically doesn’t experience those things post-birth. You’re a doctor so presumably you earn well. You’ll have to save like lots of people have to in order to take as much time off with their baby as they can. If your husband’s employer are doing nothing illegal then it seems an overreaction to be “raging”.

We're not discussing paternity leave. We're discussing shared parental leave, whereby a birthing mother can give some of her maternity leave to her partner so that they can have longer off.

So, my DH took three weeks paternity when the babies were born and then a month of SPL when I went back to work.

Birthing mothers can take SPL too, by breaking their maternity leave.

My sister is a doctor and mat pay is crap at the NHS. Her pay is better than average though (and yours is better than your dh's) so maybe it evens out a bit? You say "if I worked at his company I'd get better mat pay", but if you worked there you'd probably have a lower salary

I may have missed it but what do you actually want your combined parental leave to look like? Will you go back 6 weeks after the birth and want him to take over from there? Or are you taking 9 months and he will take the remainder? As someone else said it wouldn't make sense for you to take 9 months and then be expecting his final 3 months to be on enhanced pay as in most companies you are not paid at all by then on mat pay. I see your point if you want to go back after 6 weeks, but to be honest it's unlikely to have come up before in his company as most women take longer even when they do share parental leave.

@sashagabadon that is not correct. Everyone assumed the law based on men and women’s traditional roles it’s not.

In law only women who give birth are eligible for Mat leave and pay provided they meet the other criteria.

Paternity Leave, Shared Parental Leave and Adoption leave are all based on being the partner of the mother or the primary adopter, the sex is irrelevant. The primary adopter can be either sex.

As @Sewannoying pointed out there is case law about this subject.

For those asking how I'd like it to work
For me: first 2 months off on mat leave with my full occupational mat pay, so weeks 0-8
For him: weeks 9-12 with his occ mat pay (full from week 0-12 but only taking 4 weeks)

Then after that:
Him:13-18 75% pay
Me: 18-26 half pay
Then 27-39 me on stat mat pay or 27-35 for me on stat shared parental with him on the same shared parental and me using AL for the rest until I go back to work in month 9

To add context I am a clinical lead in my job and have always struggled with the idea of leaving my job behind for a year. Yes I knew about the inequality before getting pregnant but had I really thought about how shit it is? Guess not!

I'm not sure why this is so hard to achieve in 2023. It feels very unequal.

Have you looked at your own SPL policy OP? Pretty sure you'll be on that rather than maternity pay after the first 8 weeks.

Completely off topic, but that split looks HARD. After 8 weeks I barely knew which way was up, especially on my first, and wouldn't have been ready to leave the baby even with DH. It will be particularly difficult to achieve if you breastfeed, but presumably you've factored that into your plans.

But yes, assuming your structure is based on each employer's maternity leave policy, that does seem fair.

Plenty of countries (including many, many states in the USA) have zero maternity leave laws at all. My friend got 2 week unpaid and considered herself very fortunate. Obviously I'm not saying that's how it should be. But I do think that it was worth mentioning. I mean it definitely should be shared, ideally, but maternity leave alone is not yet standard across the western world.

We're not discussing paternity leave. We're discussing shared parental leave, whereby a birthing mother can give some of her maternity leave to her partner so that they can have longer off

But if paternity leave was say fully paid for six months it would have the same effect. Parents could take leave together, or the mum could take a year, and the dad six months, meaning that you wouldn't need to start worrying about childcare costs until the child was a toddler. AND if men were taking time out too, employers would stop discriminating against women of childbearing age.

I can't really understand how shared leave works unless you work in the same place.

I think the US is about the only country in the western world without maternity pay.

Stat leave aside, I feel your plan is slightly bonkers tbh, going back for 10 weeks when your baby might only be 10 weeks old... then leaving again.

Presumably you are both well paid given your jobs? Can't you just use savings to support? That way you could use any granted paid leave to have longer off with baby in total.

You'd both be entitled to 4 weeks' unpaid leave (parental leave) regardless of how this pans out.

I can't see how it is in any way appropriate for the OP to go to an organisation she doesn't work for and challenge her DH's paternity pay?

I guess the question about savings is a moot point given that if the system were fair we wouldn't need to. That's where my anger lies, not what is or isn't our fallback option
Yes so I might stay off longer, but the point remains basically the same. He would be on 75% til 26 weeks so me returning to work could happen when baby is 4 months or 5 months. Or we could have some time off together which would be nice (and is also possible under SPL and SPP)

Via my husband!

Also, I'm not challenging paternity pay
I'm challenging parental pay, which is different