To want to sink to my knees and cry?

[tessofthedurbervilles]

When my baby is born I would be better off not working than returning to my well paid respectable job....that is just the most stupid thing ever. All I want to do is pay my way but the system is making it easier to live on handouts.....

please no!i have no desire to turn this into that debate,just address LEM post.nothing else

Me too. Let's move on.

The fact is that when I am at work and earning money I am paying tax, which is to the benefit of society. As my children are in childcare, they are also funding the wages of the nursery owners and workers, who are also paying tax- again to the benefit of society! Add to that that I am using the skills the taxpayer has paid for me to learn, and surely it becomes obvious that, SAHM/ WOHM debate aside, working mums are contributing to society financially as well as personally, and as such should be rewarded financially/ helped with childcare to encourage continued financial input.

As apart-timer, I feel more of a SAHM, tbh, which I love, and which I am sure does still contribute to society, but doesn't add any hard cash to the coffers. This is the reason I feel childcare should be subsidised, to encourage people like me to continue to contribute.

LEM is very sorry - I am working through some "ishoos" just now and i kind of let that spill out on this thread. I am sorry i said those things about working parents because actually i have nothing but respect for mums who work. I don't think i could manage it if i am honest. I have always in the past, defended both choices so why i contradicted myself back then i don't know.

So i would like to apologise for jumping in and venting my spleen on an inappropriate thread - i'll step away now and let you move on

'Salright, LEM. We'll let you off. xx

It's hard to divide our thinking logical manifesto setting brains out from our mothering sense of self.
You have loads of valuble conributions to make to this too, especially as someone who feels the issues and who is working through them. The spleen is good! It is what drives us to keep running on this treadmill of juggling family life!
As always it's about knowing who is the enemy. It's not one group or another, workers vs sahm, disabled vs non-disabled, carers vs non carers, private ed vs state ed, it's nothing to do with any of that stuff. It's about ensuring a level playing field and recognising the value of each and every type of person. State cannot and should not define 'normal' or 'right' and nor should anyone else - the business of letting people live within their own definition of normal is tricky indeed!

stick around LEM.live to post another day an aw'that

I objected when my (male) manager announced in a departmental meeting that someone would not be returning from maternity leave and 'had chosen motherhood!' Like the rest of us had dropped the kids off at the orphanage when we came back to work.

I do have serious issues with the notion that we part timers are doing full time working women a disservice by being unreliable and not prioritising the business. It also pisses me off then employers make out like they are doing us all some huge favour.

I work 3 days a week in a reduced role. However, I turn up, get my head down and work hard. I don't get involved in office politics or have my eye permanently on the next job. They get over 10 years' experience for the 3/5 of the money and I am far less likely to leave the company as it is much harder to get a brand new part time position.

I can never understand why someone full time, who will join a company for 2 or 3 years and then leave, taking all of their knowledge to a competitor at the first available opportunity, it considered more committed than someone who wants to take some time off and then return to the company in some capacity.

This is true. I like people who get stuck in and see things through. I personally hate fast track 'jeunesse doree' graduate trainee types who plunder each workplace for what it's worth and then move on, but don't get me on my hobbyhorse!

oh, im not flouncing, just taking a dignified bow from this thread

I certainly feel I've been a mother for 24 years of, now, 5 children, rather than posting them off to some off shore child rearing enterprise to be returned to me 25 years later as fully formed adults made by strangers... despite always working full time.

NHS certainly at certain grades is 90% pay for 6 months (not the usual 90% for six weeks)... you see we hard working tax payers in the private sector only able to afford 2 - 6 weeks off with each baby are subsidising the public sector workers. It's unfair particularly as their pay is often rising higher than the private sector and Labour has created so very many new public sector jobs. Most new jobs in Wales, Scotland and the Norther are in the public sector. It's like we have a communist bit of Britain where people mostly work for the state in our poorer regions.

I'm public sector NHS - and yes the maternity rights are good since agenda for change. I don't think they are too good and the private sector is the right way however, I feel the private should simply catch up.

I imagine the decent maternity rights are a response to the exodus of 'a certain age' of nurses, physio's and other key workers. After huge sums being spent on their training, many nurses etc were leaving after 2 to 10 years as the job was too crap to be bothered juggling with family. You can see the pattern, qualify at 24 ish, work to 29 ish, have babies and run! Tragic as their experience is vital for good care delivery. Added to the massive numbers due to retire, the NHS was looking at a newly qualified workforce supported by agency workers.

The agenda for change tried to address this and make the retention problem less acute.

btw, as a 'band 6' I get 90% for 8 weeks, but any smp or ma is taken off, so that can mean the trust only pay half if you are part time. for example I earn say £1000, the SMP will cover about £440 of this figure.

Then 50% for the remaining period up to 9 months or there abouts. If I take this I agree to return to the NHS for a period of 3 months.

WRONG!!! then 50% for 18 weeks [not for 9 months]. Tut

Bugger, I was happy for a bit about my maternity pay but now I realise yet again I picked the wrong sector.

I am not on public sector megabucks, Xenia, despite my best efforts - my salary has only just caught up to what it would have been had I stayed as a teacher. Every time I think I have cracked it, whatever sector I am working in starts falling behind in pay terms. I don't know what to do. None of my entrepreneurship projects have paid off either. You are a good earner, Xenia. Do you have any tips??

Boffin - when you have overthrown the government I will fan you while you rest your swollen ankles.

Your getting nothing till the revolution comes however!

In that case treedelivery, if that's all I am going to get, lovely as the ankle fanning would be, I am going back to the lap dancing. I have had enough of using my brain.

Dammit. Have quality street around here somewhere too......it's difficult to compete against lap dancing but am willing to offer you the remaining purple ones.

Now you're talking. I like the purple ones a lot. Frankly in lap dancing terms, I would only appeal to a very niche market at the moment anyway.

There is a website for every man of every taste. All you have to do is find it, get paid huge amounts for any pictures you may have, and you will have cracked the 'right place at the right time' you have been having trouble with in your work to date.
Ta Daaaaaa!!

It may affect your opinion poll points come the revolution, should the Daily Mail get hold of it.

There is that point. Opinion polls and all that.

I don't think we need to bother with a revolution, because the Gvt is collapsing before our eyes anyway.

Interesting though that when their husbands (of the nurses) can't get work and there would be no difficulty retaining nurses in a recessions (countless women are being forced back into work as their husbands can't get jobs at the moment) whether we need the same packages and given we're putting the nation into massive debt at the moment we probably will have huge public sector cut backs to come..if this is so then you won't need packages better than the private sector to keep people. Can you then change the deal because the economic conditions are better? Very hard to do that.

How to increase income? I am not sure. I try all sorts of things all the time. Just constantly market and keep networking with people.

This is me!! Exactly! If dh [redundant with hours notice last month blah blah moan moan] can't get work then I'll be cancelling mat leave and back to work full time to keep house.

So the NHS/tax payer gains in that respect. However, despite the good leave etc, I'd still revert to part time in better times.
Also if annual leave, pension and sick leave were not so good [relative to private sector] I don't honestly know if I'd go back at all or have stayed this long. The conditions and personal presssures [litigation risk etc] are such that I would probably opt to work in another role where the skills are transferable. Lots of friends have gone into recruitment or training etc.

Hum interesting. Do you feel the public sector package is too generous?

I feel [as an example] that some roles have fair entiltlement given the nature of the work i.e. 18 wks leave with some pay in nursing/medicine due to the physical work and the 24 hours service needs. However, my mother is entitled to 1 week fully paid leave because I am having a baby. Now that is potty!! That is with social services.

As an aside - are the public sector maternity rights in particular significantly better than other areas? I seem to think my solicitor friend had a good contract but a scientist friend had a shocker.

treedelivery - I don't think they are actually.

I think xenia likes having the occasional dig at public sector workers for any perceived 'advantage' they're getting! Can't quite see her cutting the mustard in the public sector myself though!