Employer offers enhanced Paternity pay, but only Statutory maternity - surely not fair/equal?!

[EltzBee]

My employer only offers Statutory Maternity pay (nothing enhanced at all).

However, I've discovered that for male employees, they get Enhanced Paternity pay with their 2 weeks at Full Pay (rather than the statutory rate only).

To me this seems unfair and unequal - surely they should at least offer women 2 weeks at full pay to top of the first two weeks of statutory maternity pay to make it in line with the benefit they are offering their male employees?!

Has anyone experienced this or got any thoughts? I'm meant to be meeting with HR tomorrow to discuss my pregnancy and plans for maternity and thinking of raising this then.

I don’t know anything of the legals, but sounds unfair. You could start by asking them to explain the policy and leave plenty of pauses for them to justify it...

I don't think its unfair considering that women get 6 weeks at 90% pay then the however many weeks of statutory whereas men only get a nominal statutory amount for two weeks. Its enabling fathers to at least have some time off.

I don't know. On SMP you get almost 6 weeks full pay anyways. They're only getting two weeks.

We had to really scrimp so that my DH could afford to take paternity leave. SPP is not a lot. If it means more fathers can afford to take paternity leave then I think it's a good thing. It's such a special time.

I do understand where your coming from, but maybe your employers felt that it was a fairer way of doing it, allowing both men and women some time at full (Or nearly full) pay. Or maybe it just costs them more to administrate so it's easier just to pay them full pay. Or there may just be a finite pot of money and they feel this is the best way of allocating it.

I'm not sure I'd get that worked up about this.

We had this at work at when it was pointed out nicely they changed it. It still costs company more for paternity pay as it is the difference between stat and 100% whereas for the women difference between 90% and 100% -which in my company was always much less but that is the next battle.

Actually to me that seems like an attempt to even the field a bit. I would've loved my husband to take paternity leave but we couldn't afford so he had to use holiday. I do understand what your saying but I think both parents being able to easily have some time off together with the new baby is a good idea.

*you're saying (sorry, should have re-read it)

It's a very male dominated company and I'll only be the 2nd person to go on maternity leave. It's not a small company - we have nearly 500 employees. It's based in the US so maternity policy is pretty crap.

The law dictates women get the 6 weeks at 90%. If they offer to top mens two weeks up to 100%, to me they should top up the first two weeks of womens 90% to 100% - which would be pretty cheap for them to do.

I know it doesn't sound like much but it's really bugged me that with such a lousy maternity policy anyway, they're still happy to enhance mens rate.

Women could also choose to go back to work after the compulsory 2 weeks off and would then be disadvantaged compared to their male counterpart financially.

Are you in a union? They should negotiate this for you.

@RicStar it's bizarre right...both men and women should get the same 'enhancement' at least in my opinion to be offering equal benefits to men and women (and like you said - it actually costs them a lot more to give men the benefit than women).

@Petitprince no union, it's a private US technology company.

@Eltzbee I do actually think it's illegal too - although they might just stop paying men the extra and you are unlikely to bring a case for 10%... Do you have anyone you can reasonably bring it too line manager / hr. It's probably/ possibly more over sight than design.