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!

ah. i see you have covered that one very well!

I get usual, plus half pay for 12 weeks.

How funny and timely, here I sit at work in the USA, trying to update our vacation, holiday and maternity policy. Currently we have 8 public holidays, and vacation is determined by length of service, starting at 20 days at time of hire, up to 35 days, this includes all time off (Vacation, sick etc), and it is a use it or lose it deal, so if you don?t use it all by Dec 31st you lose it, unless you are in California which has very liberal and generous employment laws.

Maternity pay does not even exist, what we have is FMLA - which is a federally mandated leave policy, which says the companies with more than 100 employees must allow the employee FMLA
Under the FMLA, eligible employees are entitled to twelve workweeks of unpaidleave of absence during a rolling twelve month period for one or more of the following reasons:
The birth of a child or to care for the child, placement of a child with the employee for adoption or foster care, To care for the employee's spouse, common-law spouse (if legally recognized), minor son or daughter (generally younger than age 18 or older if incapable of self care because of a disability), or parent, who has a serious health condition as defined in the FMLA; or, The employee?s own serious health condition as defined in the FMLA.
This is a great policy till you remember it is completely unpaid, with no government subsidy.
There has been a bit of America bashing, which I think is justified, we do have a lot of problems, but employee rights are improving. But even though I would return to the UK in a heartbeat if I could only persuade my husband to come with me. , cause the UK ROCKS!!!!!

Public sector maternity pay is quite varied here. I work in local government and the national agreement is I think still about 14 weeks maternity leave with pay above SMP. My employer's scheme is much better if you've been there long enough, there are 3 levels of maternity pay with the best being for women who've been there for at least a year. I had 16 weeks full pay and then chose 24 weeks half pay (the choice was that or 12 weeks full pay).

However, my baby was due the month that SMP changed (April 2007), and I only found out 2 days before I went that I could have had 28 weeks (16 + 12) full pay and then had 11 weeks SMP. Whereas SMP was included in my 16 weeks full plus 24 half - I believe that I might have been better off taking 6 months full pay.

There's another caveat for us - we have to return for 6 months afterwards or repay most of our money - one of my colleagues who has a daughter who will be 3 this August and twins born in April 2007 is doing just that and then resigning as she doesn't want to pay back her maternity pay, but has nothing left of her wages after paying childcare.

I believe adopters are also entitled to quite good benefits on terms similar to adopters under my employer's scheme.

All that said, the better schemes weren't just handed out as a gift to public sector workers. Most of them were originally won in workplaces with high levels of unionisation, although those levels have dwindled a little now. Union members fought for them.

I work in a legal department, the second council legal dept I've worked in, and I think some of my lawyer colleagues especially earn significantly less than they could in the private sector but have taken the trade off for maternity leave/flexible working schemes. Interestingly, while they don't take maternity leave a lot of men in our section have made good use of the flexible working policies too.

What about Working Tax Credit? - I believe you can stiil claim it while on Maternity Leave so this could possibly increase when your wages go down.

There is no paid maternity leave here in Australia but there is a baby bonus which is paid by the government which is $5000 (approx £2200).

The introduction of paid maternity leave is being debated here atm and I really do hope the powers that be realise just how important it is.

I had DD in the UK and I was so grateful to have SMP.