Pregnant workers 'expoliting' their employers?!!!

[littlelamb]

The Times on the Kaplinsky
I have no opinion on the woman myself, but the whole article just smacks of bad taste imo. 'Sir Alan Sugar was right when he said recently that women should tell their employers about their reproductive plans. In doing so he made himself unpopular. However, it is surely unfair - and commercially disastrous - to expect an employer to take on, unknown, the risks to his business that new mothers are likely to impose on him.' It is opinions like this that makes it so hard for people like me to find work in the first place

As a small employer, we had to cope with five pregnancies within 12 members of staff, over a two year period.

It was difficult - but we did survive!

I can see the difficulty from the employers point of view. But articles like this seem to make it ok to discriminate against women on the offchance that they might at some stage want to take maternity leave. I don't see why that is so unreasonable.

Littlelamb - does this woman actually have kids herself? You are right it is very bad taste. Is she suggesting that women of a reproductive age should not be employed "just in case". Ho totally ridiculous.

I also think some women give most of us a bad name too. I work with a woman who is 12 weks pg and claims because of this she can't walk downstairs, go to the vending machine herself, get her own glasses of water and needs the blinds closed at all times. She also keeps saying she feels "really heavy". Ok love, wait until 8 months then! She has made everyones life a misery with her constant moaning and expecting everyone to wait hand on foot on her and to make it worse my manager is very new to the job. He is probably going to think twice about employing women in the future in case they all turn out like her.

His views aren't PC, nor are they acceptable to most of us in this day and age, but pregnancy and maternity leave can have a massive impact on a small business. This in itself is an eventuality the business should be taking account of in budgetary and staffing terms, but I've worked somewhere where a pregnant staff member made it an absolute misery to for the boss and other employees by being obtuse and awkward about everything she could think of. It set a precedent and later when I became pregnant I felt I had to go further than usual to prove myself as a result of her behaviour. Thankfully my boss was very understanding but her actions definitely left everyone with a bad taste. There is a minority who spoil it for the rest of us - but in general terms it's an employer's duty to be prepared for the possibility of a female staff member becoming pregnant. It surely shouldn't always be so shocking to them that women of childbearing age have children!

No Minnette, it is not "women such as Kaplinsky, appearing so flamboyantly unreliable and unapologetic, who make working life much harder for the rest of us" but women like you.

Does this woman not like women? I seem to remember starting a thread about an article of hers a couple of months ago where she was also blatantly unsupportive of working mothers.

Oh and anyone who has read any press articles recently about Kaplinsky can't fail to have noticed her coy responses to questions around her age, her recent marriage and how she felt about having children. FGS I thought that she was probably TTC so I can't imagine it came as that much of a shock to Five that she was pregnant!

On the other hand, at the time I got pregnant with DS1 I was working with a career woman, who had made it abundantly clear that she did not intend to have children, ever. When she discovered that I was pregnant, she made the rest of my time at that firm extremely unpleasant. She accused me of letting women down in the workplace. If I needed time off for ante-natal appointments, or, just once, because I was ill, she refused to help with my work so that my workload increased.

Had I decided to go back to work after having DS1, I would have refused to work with her again.

So women are not only having to contend with men who see them as a drain on resources, but a lot of women too who either do not want children (or who cannot have them and resent those who can) or whose children are grown-up and no longer need their mums so much.

I find this bit just plain nasty:
"It may be that when she signed her contract she wasn?t - quite - pregnant."
That 'quite' seems intended to imply that she knew she was just about to get pregnant. If she wasn't pregnant (or even if she was but didn't know yet) how on earth could she know she was about to be - even if she was trying to conceive, it could have been months, years, or forever....

Look on the bright side. Women in their fifties will soon become highly desirable employees because there is no risk of maternity leave.

Yeh! Hope for me yet then

I read this, it made me want to spit.

Why should being pregnant mean a woman is not allowed to earn a living. Does she not need money then, for the 9 months she's carrying a baby? Does a mortgage or rent magically not need paying when someone's pregnant? I think Five have a great opportunity for some good publicity here if they a) treat her well during her pregnancy b) are very openly NOT worried about it, which they are doing since they know that to publically do anything else is discriminatory c) welcome her back with open arms when she wants to return.

Minette Marin is just trying too too hard to be controversial. what is she suggesting - that Natasha should not have tried to get pregnant at all? that she should have given up work and stayed at home tending her roses before starting to conceive?

this made me laugh though:

"Is it any suprise that the British airways T5 mess precisely coincides with the easter school term. Uk businesses are paying a very high price having been forced to pander to the lifechoice of parents.

wayne, huntingdon, cambridgeshire"

Wayne, you are a nutter mate.

Oh FFS. If you don't want to employ human beings, don't. Any employee could be taken ill suddenly, could be bereaved, could be involved in a hideous accident, could be imprisoned... life is complicated and lots of things happen to people that could mean they need leave from work. It's not pregnant women. And where on earth do these employers think their staff and customers come from in the first place? SOMEONE gave birth to them... And companies are keen enough to take our money.

Minnete Marrin often seems to have a dig a mothers in the workplace. I wonder if she stopped working while her children were young, or whether she thinks that every mother should be able to find a job that can be done part time, from home.

Natasha will not even be getting any maternity pay because she is freelance so I really can't see what the problem is (except jealousy I suspect).

Of course Channel 5 will have taken into account that a married, childless woman of 35 might want a baby in the next few years. I expect their ratings will rocket- I will certainly be interested to see how her pregnancy progresses.

Good grief - this article was just spiteful. Is the Sunday Times running out of ideas and having to copy the crap that the Mail drones on about?

Mind you if any of the news programmes hired female news readers past the age of 45 then they wouldn't have this "problem".

If British industry don't want us to breed then they are going to have some problems selling their tat in twenty years time.

Personally, I have stated boycotting newspapers that print this type of crap - feel free to join me. If they all hate women so much then they won't mind losing our readership.

The thing is you can't share your pg plans because pg isn't always predictable, ispent 3 years ttc, I had to carry on with career not knowing when if ever i was going to concieve, on the flip side lots of babies aren't planned. Its unreasonable therefore to expect women to plan pg around employers

It's a bit of a spacefiller that feature. Channel Five can deal with it. But my understanding is that maternity leave is a problem for much smaller companies and how those bosses and women of childbearing age negotiate that is interesting.

It's a bit of a spacefiller that feature. Channel Five can deal with it. But my understanding is that maternity leave is a problem for much smaller companies and how those bosses and women of childbearing age negotiate that is interesting.

edam's comment about human beings reminded me once again how much I loathe the term 'Human Resources' because it says exactly what business sees their staff as - resources, not people.

Minette Martin is in the same ilk as wossername with the drippy husband - they alwatys appear in the Saturday Times bleating about their fabbo life

Rosie farking Millard, that's her.

They both have that sort of attitude where they have done everything oh-so-perfect-and-correctly, and that everyone else who dares to live their life differently is just plain wrong.

This is why Martin and Millard end up un-read in my recycling box every single week.

This article is just spiteful

I am lucky enough to have found a job that is incredibly family friendly, allowing me to take time off at no notice if my dd has been ill, and who have not made me feel that my current pregnancy is a problem (it is quite a big company though, which seems to make a difference). But while I was searching for a job, the obstacles I came up against were unbelievable. There are companies that have no qualms about asking you outright what your childcare arrangements are and if you intend to have anymore. I even had one interviewer who seemed to think it was 'quaint' that I wanted to work when I had a dd . I don't know wether I am going to return to work after this one s born, but these attitues make me dread having to put myself on the job market again. It seems my uterus is more important to some people than my degree and experience

edam makes a good point - at least you can reasonably predict that pregnancy is a possibility if you're employing a woman of childbearing age. You can't predict illness, injury, bereavement etc. This is just the sort of life stuff that employers have to be ready and able to deal with, because nobody's a robot.

I wonder if employers will start asking "Are your parents close to death then? And do you look left and right when crossing the road?" when they interview. The world's gone mad.