to be completely hacked off about British maternity leave?

[lilyelodie]

I am the main earner in the family and am currently pregnant with dc3. The company i work for offers only statutory maternity leave, so we are going to really struggle financially to enable me to have 6 months off (I flatly refuse to have any less than that, as i only had 12 weeks with DS1 and really felt i missed out as a result) - the staff at the nursery my kids are at (state funded as well as private contributions) get 9 months on full pay, and various other people i know in the public sector get at least 6 months on full pay. Does that not mean that the money i pay in taxes contributes to paying other people (much better) maternity leave but not my own?! And that we are then taxed on maternity pay makes the whole thing seem like an utter farce. I am not disrespecting the work that other people do at all, and i do recognise that often (but by no means always) people in the public sector get lower slaries, but surely this dispartiy in what people are offered as maternity leave is just plain wrong and the government should actually address it properly?
...don't even get me started on other countries who actually respect people's right to have kids and support them financially to have proper time off with them!

I work for the DWP and got 6 months at full pay, but my wage is a pittance anyway.

I work in Local Government and got 6 weeks at 90% the next 12 weeks at half pay plus SMP and then 8 weeks at SMP - so I got something for 6 months - would now get another 12 weeks at SMP.

I am stunned that civil servants get full pay for 6 months - my understanding they don't pay any contributions to their pension.

Tis true about the US - my friend only got 2 weeks paid - but I think you are entitled to longer off but unpaid.

18 months at full pay - how fab would that be.

(smiling pondering emoticon)

I used to work for a US company and at the induction day for new employees the HR person told us excitedly that the maternity leave allowance was "very generous" - it was 12 weeks unpaid.
Mind you, I wasn't allowed to take any holiday or sick leave for the first 6 months. And that was considered a good deal as at least I accumulated it. A friend worked for a company where for the first year she had no holiday at all - only the statutory bank holidays.
Which is what happens when the government basically let the employers do what they like.

hotmama I certainly contribute to my pension!!

oh this is such a big bug bear of mine, even before I had my ds. I was very fortunate in that I got 14 weeks on 90% pay then the next 21 weeks (I think) on smp up to nine months, then the remaining 13 weeks unpaid. I had to go back at 8 months as we couldn't contemplate no money coming in from me. What irks me is that I've had to really compromise on so many things for ds, bfing, childcare, time with me. The only up side I can see is that it's forced dh to spend more time with him and he's loving it. Successive governments (can't blame just this one, they're all guilty) continuously wring their hands about young offenders and youth crime, but they make absolutely no commitment to parents and children to enable them to spend more time together. Look at scandinavia where maternity pay is much higher and usually for 18 months and youth crime is among the lowest in the world. Government is obssessed about getting mothers back to work, presumably as we're paying higher taxes, but I have ended up doing everything badly. I'd rather have the freedom to stay at home a bit longer and really concentrate on giving ds 100% and then go back to work when I'm ready and give work 100%, rather than juggle everything and do nothing well.

phew! rant over!

ok, i clearly stand corrected on the public sector and the people that i know of seem to be the exception rather than the rule. apologies if i offended anyone, wasn't intentional, just vocalising the impression i had been given.
So the upshot is simply that the vast majority if people in the UK get a rubbish deal when it comes to being supported financially during maternity leave.
From the other posts - glad i don't live in the US though!

Or try changing employer at the wrong time - age 34, having worked continuously since I left uni at 21, I managed to get Maternity Allowance only because I changed from university to (related) NHS employment at about 6 weeks pg.

Incidentally, my NHS entitlement is now the same as what lots of others are saying, and the best deal I know went to a friend in the private sector (a big high street bank) who got 6 mo full pay, 6 mo half pay and then a further year unpaid career break.

but most americans get an additional 5 days personal days (you can't lump them all together but can take them one by one) and they have more public holiday than us don;t they.

Also if you don't take your sick leave you can carry it forward and accumulate it - you can in certain instances take accumulated holidays paid eg you can take sick days instead of maternity leave.

Often you can accrue extra holidays the longer you work with a company. ften the net result between small companies in the uK and American companies doesn't add up to much.

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Oh, no, Americans get much fewer public holidays.

And, under certain conditions, employers don't have to give you any of those public holidays off, even 4th of July or Thanksgiving.

And even when you're eligible to get your measly fortnight's holiday off, good luck taking it all at once!

My ex worked for a German company so he got more holiday and could take unpaid time off for long climbing trips and/or take holiday in lumps.

But the times I went with him I had to quit jobs to get the time off.

There were conditions attatched to getting 6mo full pay though; I had to have been working in the Civil Service for 12 months prior to starting maternity leave, and I had to return for at least 6 weeks after my leave ended.

Personally I think that a 'perk' like this is nothing compared to the crap wages, little hope of payrises/bonuses/promotions and general abuse from an ungrateful public that come hand in hand with the job that I do! But someone has to do it

If the govt would refund us for full salary during maternity leave, we would do it. Getting maternity cover is nigh on impossible and we usually have to use temps. Paying two salaries for one job is impossible, though.

conditions attached to mine, too.

had to go back for at least 3 months or pay it all back except the £104/week or that you'd get from the government if you got nothing else.

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I'm now going completely off-topic, but where I worked one of our bank holidays was Martin Luther King Day. Except that I was told that I would be expected to work as "only black people take that day off". Um, isn't that missing the whole point of MLK Day? And besides, it's a blummin day off! A group of us did band together and take the day, but it was frowned on by our collegues.

Also (sorry slightly off topic now but while we are on the subject of the US) my understanding is that some unscrupulous companies employ people "part time" i.e. 39 hours rather than 40. This means that the company has no obligation to pay anything towards health insurance. So some people are on very low wages, officially working part time, but with no access to any form of healthcare other than basic ER.

Most of us here in the UK only see the "good" aspects of the US and how lovely it is when you go there on holiday. I saw a different side as I have family living over there.

mercy I work in the public sector and have done for nearly 20 years, I have never heard of these one off payments. Have I missed out on something?
5 years ago we moved because of DH's work and I worked as a bank nurse in our local hospital and always in the same unit, averaging 40-50 hours per week. Became pregnant at same time I joined the permanent staff but due to bank work, I was told that I hadn't worked for NHS long enough to qualify for occupational maternity pay so would only receive 26 weeks smp. Before joining bank I had 14 years service with nhs but they would not take this into consideration.

it's a 'floating holiday, MrsTitle.

there are several of those throughout the year, like President's Day and Columbus Day.

a lot of employers will allocate 2 or 3 'floating holidays' each year to employees and that way they can chose which ones to take rather than the employer having to grant everyone every single holiday.

hotmama-another civil servant here (DWP) and I too contribute to my pension.

Am on mat leave at the moment from DWP-got 6 months full pay, 3 months SMP and am taking another 3 months unpaid. I do have to return to work and do X number of hours (based on hours worked before mat leave) or I would have to pay back the money I've had on top of SMP for the first 6 months.

Think the idea is that DWP has to be seen to treat its staff well as the Government can't bang on about whats best for children/best starts on life etc if its own employees just gets the basics-if you follow me...?

That is very true, onepiece. It's a very common practice. Your official contract is for, say, 32 hours/week, even though most weeks you work 40 hours (and are paid for that).

The other common practice is to just keep temps on for years and years. They then don't have to pay holidays, sick pay OR insurance contributions.

Or even offer you participation in their health insurance or pension plans.

Not for us it wasn't expat. We were circulated a list of official holidays at the start of the financial year (with the Friday after Thanksgiving always highlighted as a normal working day!) and MLK day was on the list.

Although I shouldn't complain really, as we did get good subsidised health insurance cover which I know is pretty rare. And we did take full advantage of the cheap restaurants.

Hmm, Tittle. Some employers made MLK day an official holiday on their calendar to avoid being sued, FWIW.

But most people get round it by making it a floater. The list of floating holidays is huge, too. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Cinco de Mayo, President's Day, etc.

The whole temp thing goes on in Britain too. I have friends in academia who are kept on 3 year contracts over and over, so that they don't have the rights of regular employees. Then they are "sacked" for a few months and re-employed, as a contract employee starts getting rights if they have been continuously employed for a certain length of time.

And then that 8AM-5PM shit.

Fuck that!

No way I'd ever go back there again.

Not for all the cheap restaurants and Super Targets on the planet.

Ah, I see. We certainly didn't get Cinco de Mayo as a holiday. I always found that quite fun about the US - that everyone was more than willing to co-opt everyone else's traditions and holidays as an excuse for a good knees-up.