Plans to allow small firms to negotiate parental (maternity) leave

[flyingcloud]

Has this been done?

It just makes me so :(

Exactly.

It all fits in quite nicely with the Big Society.

Ah, some responses! Good!

I should have warned DONT READ THE COMMENTS!

Firstly Portofino is right - ML in the UK is exceptionally generous compared to France and Belgium, other countries in Europe I don't know. Childcare is cheap though, and as Bonsoir points out, there is often no financial reason to stay at home here (am in France).

I do think that long maternity leave can be very detrimental to business(but equally the needs of society, and raising the next generation are very, very important). Who has it right?

I am just deeply troubled by this proposed measure on an idealogical basis.

swallowedAFly - it does not make good economic sense for women to stay at home providing free domestic services all their lives.

That is an entirely separate discussion to the one on encouraging parents to stay together to bring up their children.

The time has not passed when financial considerations must be made when deciding economic policy.

flyingcloud - my DP, who runs a business in France employing hundreds of women of childbearing age and for whom factoring in maternity leave is a routine part of working life, would prefer maternity leave to be longer along the UK model. He says that it is very difficult - impossible, even - to replace people for four months and that it would be much easier to replace them for a whole year (which, incidentally, is an excellent recruiting mechanism - one year maternity cover on a CDD allows the company to fully appraise an employee before offering them a CDI).

Oh that's interesting Bonsoir, I hadn't thought about it like that.

Bonsoir, women already save the tax payer millions by doing unpaid caring work.

It seems obvious to me that the more we can get women to do for free, the less it costs the state.

Not force, no, but encourage, yes. I think it is the business of governments to preoccupy themselves with encouraging parents to bring children up in stable families with sufficient autonomous resources to meet their needs.

swallowedAfly. They have childcare sewn up in Belgium. Wrap round care in provided from children aged from 2.5 - 12 using the school buildings.

So basically my dd's school opens at 7.30 am. There is a rota of non-teaching staff present to look after the children. School starts at 8.25. The "garderie" staff return at lunchtime for an hour and half and supervise food/play etc. They then cover the period between 3.05pm and 6pm, plus Wednesday afternoons. This costs me about 35 euros a month. It is also tax-deductible.

The commune has 3 state primary schools, so in the school holidays, they take it in turns to host the holiday club. The "garderie" staff from each of the schools cover this, with students as extra hands during the Summer holidays. This costs about 20 - 35 euros per week depending on whether a cooked lunch is offered. This is also tax-deductible.

It CAN be done.

Steps like this will backfire against small businesses. The more you chip away at employees rights the more difficult it will be for small businesses to recruit high calibre staff. We won't always be in a recession and when the economy starts to grow the small businesses will be left behind.

thaigreencurry - I think the issue that many small businesses are worrying about at the moment is surviving the recession - and praying that they survive until the economy starts to grow.

that is one :( article

Portofino- Aren't Belgians taxed very heavily?
Is this how it's paid for?

If I remember correctly they pay over 50% income tax on a salary of ?30000 and isn't there a social security payment as well.

I think we could improve childcare etc here but it would have to come out of taxes.

Youllskimmer, yes you are correct. I pay 50% tax plus ss payment. I nearly had a fit when we moved here. But actually it works overall to pay more tax but get better services.

What thaigreencurry said. 50% of this country's talented employees will no longer consider working for a small business. The bigots who moan disproportionately about the cost of ML and openly boast about how they discriminate against women will regret it when they find that the talent pool from which they have to recruit has shrunk by half and their current employees are leaving in their droves to somewhere that looks after them properly.

The idea seems to have taken hold that ML is too burdensome for companies in this country - that the risks are all on the side of the employer and unscrupulous women are taking advantage. This idea needs some serious challenging as it's wrong on every level. SMP is repaid in full by the State and companies are not obliged to pay any extra. Of course it's not easy to cover for any leave that an employee takes, but the same is true if they take time off sick or have other time away. At least the company isn't losing the employee permanently.

Where the law could do with tweaking is in the amount of notice that women are entitled to give. Happy to be instructed, but what's the benefit to women of not telling their employers that they don't plan to return? Assuming that their rights to SMP are protected (and to any other benefits that the employer has contracted) why should they not say this and allow the employer to recruit a permanent replacement? I think what annoys a lot of employers (and I know this is ajandjjmum's situation) is that the employee can be on mat leave for a year and then announce that they're not returning. I can't see a problem with asking women to announce their intentions before they leave and requiring them to commit to these. If they've said they'll take 6 months and come back when they say they will, the employer has even less excuse than they do now to discriminate against them.

But I'm 100% opposed to removing statutory maternity leave from any company. And this policy will treat women working for small companies as second class citizens.

We run a small business - 3 employees, and have had a couple of maternity leaves in the past 5 years. Finding a replacement isn't normally hard, managing the SMP is fine (as other posters have mnetioned, you just need to claim the rebate). The tricky part is managing the respective rights and expectations of the absent mother adn the present temporary person.

I currentlyhave one person off with her 4 month old. We need to take on - right now- a part timer to expand our capacity in her area of expertise. I can't wait 5 months to do this. So i'll have to create this post, in almost certainty that my mat leave person will want to come back in a couple of months, also part time. At which point i either refuse her on the grounds that. There are now no part time hours available (don't want to do this as we like her, great worker, asset to the business), or get rid of new part- timer to create an opening (write off my rercruitment and training costs), or end the contract for her mat cover person (also a pity, she's v good) and end up with three part timers to achieve the same total hours and coverage. I know this isn't the fault of any of the individuals, or of the female gender as a whole, but it makes lots of tough calls for small businesses. Some of us really are trying our best to do the right thing for everyone in a tough recession!

Just bumping this ahead of the announcement on Wednesday.

Just been reading a few articles and in the ones I have seen, it says that 20 weeks (or something like that) of mat leave are going to be made available to the (usually male) partner. Are firms also going to start negotiating with men when they employ them about what/if they will be taking this chunk of leave? They certainly ought to. But I have a funny feeling that it won't work out like that...

I also haven't been able to find any detail about how this reform will work. From what I can gather it simply takes us back to women being sacked on pregnancy - something that happened to my great-aunt in about 1940. That's progressive then

Has anyone seen any discussion or kite-flying for the possible proposals on this?

It's not at all clear to me what the possible changes might be, so in turn impossible to take a view really. Though definitely one to keep an eye out for.