Furloughed while on maternity leave - don't understand, please help!

[MumOfFraggle]

I began maternity leave in December 2019 and planned to take the full year off, having saved like a demon to make this possible. My company's maternity policy is full pay for 12 weeks, then it goes down to statutory maternity pay only, then zero for the last three months of the year.

I heard from another colleague on maternity leave that she'd received a letter saying she's been furloughed. I called my manager who was surprised that I hadn't received a letter too and said he would look into it.

I can't figure it out. My company is very profitable and this hasn't been impacted by coronavirus. And given that it's a large organisation, and they haven't furloughed anyone else to my knowledge, it seems odd (and slightly low of them) to furlough colleagues on mat leave.

Does anyone know why a large, financially healthy organisation would do this? Is it really just to claw back SMP or is there another benefit to them?

Is it not in your favour though? Will you not now get more pay than you did before?

That's odd. They dojt need to "claw back smp". The government pay that anyway, and you're past 12 weeks so they arent topping it up anymore.
Are you still getting your SMP or have your payments changed? I really dont knowhow furlough would change the SMP and what benefit that would be to your employer.

You can’t just be moved onto furlough you have to agree to it as it’s a change in your contract. Was her maternity leave coming to an end? You should be moved from maternity pay to furlough as that would be cutting your leave short (and also mean you could be called back to work at any time)

*shouldn’t be moved

Or is it so they can claim the full pay bit back? You don't get the extra furlough pay unless you end your maternity leave

maternityaction.org.uk/covidmaternityfaqs/furlough/

What @AhGoGo said. You’d need to agree to bring your mat leave to an end and go on furlough. Plus I don’t think people could be placed on furlough after 10 June

Gosh. Now I'm even more confused. Does the government pay SMP? I thought it was just the minimum amount employers are supposed to pay employees by law.

My colleague went off on mat leave a couple of weeks after me. Our contractual maternity pay finished in February(-ish) and we're both now in the SMP-only period. I just checked my payslip and I'm due to be paid the normal SMP amount this month.

You can be on furlough while on maternity leave. Done to recoup enhanced costs back - see the link

@dementedpixie that's a useful link, thank you.

I don't think my employer can claw back the twelve weeks of full pay because that ended before we even went on lockdown. So that can't be the motivation.

And not a soul has spoken to me about being furloughed in the first place. My colleague said she received her letter out of the blue and nobody said anything to her in advance. I don't know if she followed up and queried it with her boss today or not.

@MumOfFraggle
Your employer will pay you SMP and then claim it back from the government as it is a government mandated payment.
It allows you to earn a basic income and allows your employer to use what would have been your salary to pay a temporary replacement if needed etc. So they dont need to pay 2 salaries.

Enhanced packages are totally up to employers and they pay anything above SMP. But they cant claim that back through furlough because it was too long ago for them. I've no idea why they have furloughed you.

Thanks @BobbieDraper - I have to say, I'm baffled as to what the benefit is to my company. Time for a phone call to my boss tomorrow, I think!

I suspect the company will claim that you are off mat leave, on furlough, stop claiming SMP from govt and instead claim 80% of your wages.

In the meantime they will continue to lay your SMP, and pocket the difference.

@BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz

But very soon they will need to pay 20% of that themselves and when the scheme ends the OP will need to go back to work or quit. She isnt planning to return until the 12 months are up.

Simply put, they would get caught.

The employer cannot make that change without her permission because it has ramifications down the line.

Oh I don't think they would do that, @BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz - they're an extremely ethical organisation, I can't imagine for one second that they would do something so underhand. Underhand and probably illegal. Honestly, I'd stake my house on this not being the case. And that's not just me being naive . . . I hope!

The only thing I can guess is that it's a plain old mistake - someone has messed up their admin!

Doesn't make sense as you would have to go back when the government ends the furlough scheme rather than after 12 months.

@MumOfFraggle

Hi OP, did you find out what was going on? I was just talking to a friend about redundancies and realise that if they've taken you off maternity leave, it could be easier to make you redundant if they need to.

Hi @BobbieDraper - well, it's now a long, convoluted story so I'll try to summarise . . . basically my boss said he didn't know why I hadn't received a furlough letter but he would find out. My colleague then got back in touch to say her letter was because she had two weeks of full pay within the lockdown/furlough period so clearly she was being furloughed so the company could reclaim that. Doesn't apply to me as I was on SMP during furlough period, so I shouldn't have got a letter and my boss doesn't know what he's talking about.

HOWEVER . . . my boss then got in touch to say I'm at risk of redundancy as they are merging two teams (I manage one of them; I'm now in a pool of candidates eligible to apply for the new role that manages both teams).

I don't know what to do. I'm not sure I want double the responsibility for no promotion or extra pay. It will be a nightmare and there are other jobs out there that I could apply for.

So basically it's all a bit of a mess at the moment.

If you are on maternity leave then i think you should be getting first choice of job without having to reapply for it.

maternityaction.org.uk/advice/redundancy-during-pregnancy-and-maternity-leave/

If the merger is coming up (and the new job role assignments come into play) before your maternity leave was due to end, then they've totally tried to do an end run around the law there.

With furlough being such a novel thing, they'll be using it as an excuse and a "oh, we didnt realise" kind of attitude.

Take some time to think over what you want; you dont need to take on a new role of they arent going to pay you any more for it! But if you do want to stay in that company, then maybe speak with pregnant then screwed; they have some good template letters. Nothing that will apply specifically to switching you from leave to furlough because its kinda unheard of! But they might be able to help you.