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 :)

From my understanding you can take shared parental leave in blocks but the pay has to be taken in the time frame. So if you were to go back say week 20 to give him some of the leave but he doesn't get paid occupational pay then I believe you would lose it. I don't think you can just save it for your next block.

What on earth is this all about. Why do people keep wanting more and more. You get the package on offermat your company. If your not happy change jobs. Raging about what exactly.

The fact that people’s policies and options vary so widely seems like a sure driver of inequality and I dislike it. I feel like if you succeed here, it puts people like me way more on the back foot. Apparently the current basic rate of statutory maternity pay right now equates to just 47 per cent of the National Living Wage…which seems insane. I made do with statutory maternity pay over the 6 months I was able to afford to take off with the savings I had managed to cover it. Shared leave was very much academic to my choices. I would say probably we should make statutory maternity pay way higher before we start to try to legally challenge well paid men getting really jammy options? Or is that bitter. Maybe I’m bitter.

Mrselsa and Vivienne. I am not personally asking for anything from them? Im asking for my DH to be paid to be the primary caregiver of baby as he would be if he were on mat leave.

I see what you're saying about your husband's leave. Strangely, I'm in a situation where my husband's paternity leave is far superior to my maternity leave. It means we're doing shared leave and he's doing more than me. It's great equality-wise but it's going to mean a lot of logistical issues when i return to work, especially with breast-feeding/ pumping. I would say though that the main thing you can do for paternity pay is raise it with employers and work at places with these benefits in mind. If companies cannot recruit because their packages aren't good enough, they'll have to move with the times. Might help you next pregnancy, if not this one.

Couldn't agree more. Let's get a decent pay for all women on maternity leave. Before even considering letting well paid men play at childcare to beat the system. Men aren't on maternity leave. They're not mothers.

A lot of shared parental leave policies are pegged to the first six months, which makes it difficult for dads to take. Ideally a policy should be six months anytime in the year after birth, so that dad's can take the second six months. Do challenge. We took it and it was great for our family. Thankfully my husband's workplace allowed six months in the first year but it has prevented him moving jobs as this benefit is too good to leave on the table for future baby plans.

Not really answering your question but my OH works for one of the ‘big 4’ and their Spl policy is the same as their mat leave policy which is great. My policy is that I get the first 26 weeks full pay and statutory thereafter. His is basically the same, so we opted to both take the first 6 months off together, both on full pay. (You need to remember that the level of pay relates to the period of time after the birth, not how much time you have taken. Ie if my OH took 6-12 months off he’d get paid nothing). Because we didn’t want to put our LB in nursery at 6 months my OH then took 3 months unpaid leave which took us to 9 months (I went back to work at 6 months). I then took my accrued holiday to do 3 days a week for a couple of months whfn my OH went back. Good luck with it all.

Pay for women in general will increase if more men take parental leave, as a male and female employees will be expected to have similar levels of absence due to child rearing. Shared parental leave makes dad's great, capable and invested fathers- which in turn also helps working mums.

I have no advice but just wanted to vent that the entirety of the bloody SPL legislation needs binning and starting again. It is absolute madness that intelligent people can't work out what they're entitled to and that companies can't work out what they are supposed to be offering.

My husband and I have used SPL twice. Both times we had to explain to our HR departments how it worked as we knew far more than they did. A complete shambles.

The disparity in men’s and women’s pay is only partly explained by women being paid less for the same work due to discrimination. So that’s a pretty unreliable long game you are playing there, while women with babies right now need food banks.

Out of interest was there any enhanced parental pay or was it statutory?
I'm so glad to hear someone say this. I feel like I should be able to figure this out but neither of our HR depts have a clue.

It really isn't very generous.
It's better than stat but lots of companies now offer full pay for much longer

He won’t be on maternity leave or entitled to maternity pay because he’s not a mother.
Bravo to his company for recognising the difference.

Your partner isn't taking maternity leave though

Why do you think the pay shoukd be different out of interest? He is an employee taking time off to care for his newborn child, why should the employer differentiate between men doing that and women?

It’s been explained several times in the thread.

DH is civil service and had enhanced pay if the leave was taken in the first 6 months, so it was nice that that was available. My employer also pays enhanced shared parental pay but only implemented that fairly recently.

Most irritating point was when some idiot in his HR department told us that they thought I was claiming too many weeks at full pay. Why they were concerning themselves with what I was being paid instead of worrying about their own employee is beyond me.

100% this.

I guarantee you his company isn’t offering women more mat pay because they care about women being mothers. They are doing it because they are trying to disincentivize male employees from taking shared leave.

I’m surprised any company pays better mat pay than nhs. Isn’t it full pay for 10 months?

I think you need to clarify your dh’s policy and pay amount.

That’s odd. My DH is civil service and took months 6-9 off SPL and received enhanced pay.

I was the first and only person at my workplace to do shared parental. I took 6 months off, went back for 3 and then had another 3 months off.
DH's workplace took the government maternity allowance funding for those middle months and I had my standard salary. We were lucky as their policy allowed DH to have full salary for up to 6 months in the first 9months as long as I sacrificed my leave time.

My then workplace now has a parental leave policy so either parent can get 4month salary if they take at least 6months. Benefits dads more if their other half is somewhere else as no maternity leave sacrifice

Perhaps it differs between different civil service departments. Or maybe it can be applied to later months if you get a HR person who knows what they're doing!

I’d agree, civil service HR is a mess.