Maternity leave!! Full time nanny returning to a part-time job???

[ziopin]

I've had a nanny for a year now, and she is leaving in July to have her baby.

When she returns after Christmas I only need a part time nanny (dd in school full time from Sept, and ds in p/t nursery). My Mam has said she'll look after the kids pre-school.

She wants to bring her baby to work with her. I have spoken to her and ssid this is ok, but I dont think she is too happy with the part-time position (this is all I need now!!) She has said she will visit her local citizens advice!!

I've been told that I MUST offer her her old job back, but I dont need a full time nanny!

whilst you must offer her old job back you are not required to allow her to bring her baby. this will mean that either she will adapt to the new hours with her baby or she will work fulltime without her baby until you make her redundant or she will look for another job. If she's only worked for you for a year redundancy is not that expensive but you may find she resigns anyway.

Don't get pushed into full time with baby if it's not what you want.

How much redundancy pay should I pay her?

I think it's one week for every year she's worked for you - but you'd better check. There will be websites that will tell you I'm sure if you google it or if you use nannytax I expect they can tell you too.

She may have a mortgage to pay so she may be better lolking for another job. We had 2 nannies who left to have babies and one returned with her baby (we were happy with that) as our older ones were at school but she went part time I think but then did full time in school holidays. I think our 3rd child was in nursery school in the mornings so she started at noon when he finished. It suited her as we could have said you can't bring your baby to work so coming back at reduced pay but without her having to pay someone to mind her baby was a good compromise.

If here you have agreed she can bring the baby back to work full time then you may not legally be able to change what you offered.

Our last nanny always knew she would not be needed when they turned 5 and were at full time school as she was in effect "redundant" and she needed a full time job but there were no issues over that - the job had ceased to exist. On the other hand if we had suddenly said I've decided to find someone else to do Monday - Wed then that's not redundancy.

I think you should see a lawyer. Doing anything to pregnant women except perfection in their treatment seems to lead people into tribunals.

I think you need legal advice. Nannytax have a great helpline if you are a subscriber to them. I reckon you can get the result you want, but you need to be careful to follow the right steps, or your nanny could have a claim against you.

Before you ask someone to leave you have to follow a set procedure.
Also redundancy pay is something like a week for each year of service or something like that btu she might be entitled to serve some notice under her agreement. I'm not sure she is redundant though. look at all the mumnet threads of mothers made redundant whilst pregnant - it's a minefield.

This issue of being a working parent dealing with a nanny's maternity leave always interested me as we had it twice. We even had 2 revenue inspections of our perfectly paid nanny tax over 15 years plus a third one to look into the payments of the nanny's SMP which I had paid perfectly but it took hours of time.