Maternity leave-trying to assess how good/bad I have it

[PineCones]

I'm sorry if there is an existing thread that has the answers, but I couldn't find one.. so..
I'm trying to assess how good a deal my employer is offering. To me it sounds like the absolute statutory minimum but I'm happy to be educated!
(a) I get ordinary mat leave of up to 39 weeks- the only payment during this time is the statutory maternity pay. Which I believe is 90% for the first 6 weeks and after that the statutory minimum (about £125 a week?)
and
(b) additional, unpaid mat leave of another 13 weeks

Is this good or are employers who offer better than this, the exception?
My employer doesn't really push the boat out in terms of pay/benefits generally so i'd like to know where i (and all the other women in my office) stand!
Any help most appreciated!

Small private sector company, statutory / minimum.

2 x stat min
one huge rich multinational which was v generous on other things including pat leave
one small charity

I got 18 weeks at 90% full pay, the remainder at SMP and the last 13 weeks unpaid.

Oh, sorry, I got that from a large, publicly funded organisation.

I got 6 weeks at 90%.

Then 12 weeks at 50% pay plus the stat mat pay.

Then remaining was smp until the last period which was unpaid.

Why so wound up OP? Stat minimum it may be but unless your working for a big well-off company or public sector, it's pretty standard really, although plenty of exceptions both way I know. I understand your frustration but I don't think this is one to feel cross with your employer about, especially if their other benefits are not over-generous.

you're

Public sector isn't always generous , depends which bit
< implodes>

What are you imploding about HJ?

Bp don't give a year. I have a friend there.It's a max of 6 months full pay if you've been employed there more than 5 years. Sliding scale up to that point depending of years of service.

Public sector being deemed more generous. We get stat everything. Only certain sectors get 'extras'.
I also don't have a good pension( never mind gold plated) or even decent redundancy payments.
getting fed up of explaining public sector is not all the same!

and I work for social services who are hated wholesale anyway

On the whole they are more generous as far as I am aware, in that probably a larger proportion of public sector organisations offer something above statutory than elsewhere.

And I also said there are exceptions, and I also said statutory minimum isn't standard in the public sector, which isn't the same as saying all public sector organisations offer more.

I don't think you need to explain all public sector isn't the same, it's already evident from this thread and no one said anything different.

flowery it's a mixture of other things too as you may have guessed. This just adds an extra zing to that. Stupid me, had not bothered to figure this out before (ah the arrogance of youth) and had thought, well at least will get decent mat benefits.
TBH with the way things are right now in the world i am grateful to have a job at all!

And it is a big well off company

Sorry flowery , bit sensitive on that

I don't know anyone - except one friend who works for the BBC - who has been paid more than the statutory minimum

It is much easier for somewhere like Jaguar/Landrover to give 12 months full pay as they have so few women (10% according to the link above) most of the women will be in admin roles rather than engineering so will be cheaper to give 12 months full pay to than their average employee. I got 6 weeks full pay, 20 weeks 1/3 pay and 13 weeks SMP with a 6 week full pay return to work bonus which I had to pay back because I didn't stay for 12 months. My new job has a similar level of package but it is skewed towards the period after maternity leave rather than during so it rewards you for returning rather than being off. That makes more business sense and helps with childcare costs but on the other hand might not give you the money when you most need it.

HJ. I can imagine, you are right there is a general wider perception that public sector organisations are universally very generous with pensions and other benefits, which must be particularly galling to deal with if you're not even benefiting from said supposed generosity..!

OP there usually is more to it yes. :) I'm also very aware of the tendency for employees who are perfectly justifiably not happy about various things at work to take on board things which are actually fine and add them to the pile where they wouldn't be normally a problem. Difficult to separate things out I know but on the other hand it's easy to allow concern about genuine issues to become either magnified or even diluted by adding all sorts of other stuff in.

I hope I'm explaining myself, and it's not a criticism at all.

flowery you're quite right. If I hadn't felt hard done by in the other areas, this would have been one of those things..

I think I'll get 12 weeks at 90% then SMP.

But if that's the case, I'm back at work after 12 weeks because DH only earns about £9K (newly self employed!)

I work for an American Corporate, who are much, much less generous than the public sector org I used to work for, who offered 6 months full pay.

I got statutory, plus four weeks at 70%. I didn't feel too hard done-by. It's a small company.

Do those on a year's full pay get penalties if they don't go back. I didn't, but probably only because the boss didn't think of it.

Was very pissed off that DH only got statutory paternity pay though. He had to use annual leave instead because we just couldn't afford it. Fortunately he gets 25 days' holiday so not as bad as for those on just the minimum holiday entitlement.

My friend's husband gets four weeks paternity leave on full pay and 30 days' holiday a year

I get 26 weeks full pay, 13 weeks statutory and 13 weeks at zero. This is a v large 'not for profit' male dominated company. I know how lucky I am though, I have worked for private companies where you got nearly bugger all.

As others have said, it is standard, not measly and meets the stat min.

Fwiw I get the same "package".

Companies that give more are very generous IMHO - they don't have to.