Hi
I'm in a real state about my employment situation and I know I am being treated badly, I just don't know what to do about it.
I have been working as an employee for just over 3 years for my company, which is a very small firm. I am a proper employee and my tax and NI is deducted from my salary etc. We have no HR department or policies on anything.
I am pregnant, due August 12th. I have tried to discuss maternity and have the following options:
- I work until the 9th August and then take no more than 6 weeks off at 90% salary before returning (preferably 4 weeks if the baby arrives on time). For this year I can't have more than a few days holiday due to the time off later in the year. (For this holiday year to date I have had 3 days plus bank holidays).
- He will have to let me go as we are a small team and it makes it too difficult to manage workload if I have significant time off. He is not prepared to offer a redundancy package as I have been offered an alternative option as outlined above. But I do get my full SMP entitlement.
I KNOW both options are not fair and not what I am entitled to. Both have only been outlined verbally.
The question is what do I do and what are my options for resolving the situation.
Ideally, despite everything, I want to keep my job as I live in a fairly rural location and work opportunities aren't plentiful (especially on my current salary) but I can't see a way to resolve this to work things out unless I go for option 1 and just accept it, but I don't feel that is reasonable or enough time with a newborn (my first).