Childcare vouchers and maternity leave - we've gotta fight for our rights!!

[ceebee74]

This is a spin off from an ante-natal thread but feel free to join in if you are in this situation - there are currently 3 of us trying to get to the bottom of the new legislation that has just come in.

Vbab&Sparkle - what I meant by 'paying twice' may not affect you if you just receive statutory maternity pay whilst on mat leave - but my employer has quite a generous scheme so I get 8 weeks at full pay, 18 weeks at half pay plus SMP and the final 13 weeks at SMP only - so they can still deduct the vouchers for the first 26 weeks of my mat leave as I am receiving something other than SMP.

However the amount of my maternity pay is calculated on the average I earned during 17-25th weeks of pg so, if I had still taken the vouchers during those weeks, my salary would have been lower (as it would have been on an amount with the vouchers deducted) therefore my mat pay would be based on the lower amount and then during my mat leave, as I receive Occupational Maternity Pay, they would also have deducted the £243 vouchers aswell - so technically I would have paid twice for them - does that make sense?

It doesn't really affect you if you only receive SMP apart from the first 6 weeks.

Anyway, going to work out the figures now as I do think, if it is right that you can't have it both ways, I have picked the best option for me.

But, when I cancelled my vouchers in July, the woman at our voucher provider knew it was so my pay would not be affected and she confirmed I could restart them in September so I am a bit confused about this stopping and restarting business. Will try and find out more.

So they have to pay for the vouchers for me while on maternity leave for free? ie we get a freebie? for 9 months?, and i will get the 90% of my earnings for 6 weeks untouched and the remaining SMP?

Sorry for sounding stupid but this is confusing.

Where does it say this legally - I need to give something to my employers.

Thanks

Morning Jackie

Yes, a freebie Sounds too good to be true doesn't it but it isn't! Not sure about the 6 weeks at 90% pay (Sparks will know more about that than me) but definitely for the remaining 33 weeks of your paid mat leave.

If you look right at the beginning of this thread (page 2ish), there is a link that I did to a leaflet from the Daycare Trust which explains it all and maybe you could give that your employers. There are plenty of other stuff on the internet but this explains it quite clearly - let them do the rest if they want it confirmed more!!

I've curently cancelled mine for 2 months so it doesn't affect my maternity pay, but they are due to restart from Oct, so then I'll mention it to HR - once they have restarted - they've told me they are going to do a wages breakdown for me, ie, what I'll get paid each month of the year I;m having off, so I might wait and see what that shows and then bring it up as by then the legislation will have come in.

I've given in about my choice of hospital again, but this is money and much more importnat!! DC1 was due just after the 1st April 07 deadline for getting 9mths SMP instead of 6 and it loosk like I'm going to get another windfall we weren't anticpating!!

Ok, well I've spoken to the childcare liaison person at work, and because I'm 21 weeks pg already it is too late for me to cancel my vouchers because my mat pay will already be calculated.

But, they will calculate that on the vouchers that I'm currently getting, which are to the value of £96 per month.

From October, I will be claiming £243 per month, and will contine with that all through my 9 months mat leave (and beyond).

Does that mean that though I will get £96 less in terms of mat pay, I will still get £243 vouchers while on leave???
I don't understand!!!

Spink - I think what you have said in your last sentence is correct if I have understood you correctly.

When you start your maternity leave, the first 8 weeks will be your normal full pay less £96 per month that you have sacrificed - and then it will also be less the £243 vouchers that they will deduct but obviously you will get that money to pay for childcare.

From the 9th week of your mat leave, your pay will be SMP (currently about £117 per week) plus half your normal full pay less £96 per month that you have sacrificed (so your full pay, minus £96 - then halve it). They will also deduct £243 vouchers which you can spend (if there is enough of your half pay to deduct that from)

From the 27th week of your mat leave, you will receive just SMP - but you will also receive £243 vouchers to spend but this will not be deducted from your SMP so they basically will just give you them.

If you choose to take some unpaid leave after the 39 weeks are up, you will obviously not receive any pay but still receive the £243 per month of vouchers to spend.

Does this make sense??

Oh, Ceebee, that was like a shaft of light into a very very dark room. I am printing out your last message and taping it into my mat leave documents for future reference.

You must be great at your job.
Thank you.

Just found this thread... and have been blithely continuing with my full £243 deduction throughout my qualifying weeks (am now 27 weeks so too late!) without realising any implications.

In any case, my contract of employment explicitly states that any salary sacrifice benefits (of which childcare vouchers are one - we also have other things in our flexible benefits scheme as well) will automatically cease during any period of maternity leave once income is not sufficient to cover the cost. Because they are a tax-deductible benefit, they don't get given to you for 'free' once you stop earning enough to be paying tax - at least at my company this is the case.

They can then be restarted upon return to work.

Verso, my employers told me a similar thing... C/C vouchers are voluntary so only payable while you have income to cover them. Legally this is bullsh*t as far as I can make out. Still await their response but the info links on this thread supports my understanding.

My parents are employers and I work for them. We were notified of this new change in law only this week (Tuesday to be precise) so please don't blame employers for not knowing about it all yet/

I suspect some of the mailings havn't arrived yet.

Verso, a contract can only exceed the law, not limit it. Your contract can state the above, but is irrelevant, because the law has explicitly stated that you are entitled to continue receiving vouchers, and in the event of you not receiving enough pay to cover it, the company foots the bill.

Spink - bless you for your kind comments - glad I can be of help

Verso - as Lou says, the law supercedes your contract of employment so your company will have to provide you with the vouchers whilst you are on maternity leave. As the law has only been amended recently, the company will obviously not have amended their contracts accordingly but they cannot just ignore it.

Ceebee the guy in HR that i know fairly well and who usually smiles and talks to me now gives me a look that would turn milk when he passes my desk!!

And this is when all my dealings with them so far have been very polite and calm...!

One of my friends is due before 5.10.08 but her company have told her in her mat stuff that vouchers will be on top of SMP when she goes on to this... Unfortunately for her she is only entitled to them for 26 weeks. But I was impressed and pleased for her that they are on the ball about this without her having to raise the issue.

Sprks - fgs, that bloke in HR wants a slap then!! It is not like he is paying it out of his own wages is it?? Probably just annoyed that you showed his ignorance lack of employment law knowledge up

Great news for your friend - tbh, our organisation is now doing something similar but it has taken them a while to get to this point.

You can't blame lack of knowledge on employment law when the notification of the change only went out this week (we got it from a flyer from ACAS we have had no notification from anyone else.)

Haha he is a bit of a jobsworth and comes into the office at 7am and doesn't leave until 8pm (hours are 9-5 like everyone else who is f/t!).

Thing is I have never even spoken to him or emailed him about it! Can understand that no one likes to be told their job but is it my fault they are not keeping themselves up to date??!! Actually I find it all quite funny and as I said am not surprised at their lack of knowledge as my HR have been proven wrong in past over maternity rights by others. Very poor.

Hope to find out my fate next week (but probably redundancy or something)...

Islandofsodor (love the name btw, I swear my lounge actually is the Island of Sodor ) - my company has had this information since early July and I remember reading about it in a HR magazine prior to that (maybe June?) Not sure when the legislation first came out but the ruling/interpretation regarding childcare vouchers has been around for nearly 3 months now.

So, yes I do think a qualified HR person should know about it as it is our job to keep ourselves informed of employment law. I think it is only just becoming 'common knowledge' but HR departments should have known for a while.

if i was working and used childcare vouchers, would they affect my long-term state pension? tia x

Point taken. I still think it's bad that in family run companies like ours (around 30-40 employees) we have only just been informed.

Not that we will ever need this info as I am the only "woman of childbearing age" and dh has had the snip!!!!!

Also islandofsodor, in my case my employers are international, they have access to large HR depts and have accountants/lawyers on tap. IMO there is no excuse for their lack of knowledge and consequential WRONG advice they have been giving recently!

Certainly if they were a smaller company I might have more sympathy but as they certainly aren't I am afraid I don't.

From what I have read this info has been around since April 08 and been filtering through via HR literature ever since. Even people who are due before 5.10.08 are still entitled to vouchers on top of SMP (just for the duration of OML tho not AML too). My friend has discovered this to be the case via her UK wide company without any prompting from her. Seems to be the luck of the draw even in bigger companies
.

Absolutely fantastic! Thank you so much for this thread!

I just spoke to our HR (am 17 weeks today) and it looks like this is going to save us a fortune next year. Although I had to take the HR man printouts as well as he didn't have a clue about the whole thing, he seemed helpful and promised to get this sorted by tomorrow. Accor said that there is no problem with suspending the vouchers for two months and starting them again.

Ladies I've been lurking on this thread for a bit and just want to clarify my understanding of the position. I am very unlikely to have anymore dcs myself but as a line manager I like to know whats what and not rely on the sometimes dubious understanding of HR!

So is this right?
1)if you are taking vouchers when you become pregnant the advice was always that you should suspend them during the qualifying weeks so that your pay isn't reduced but you could then restart the vouchers? Is there a question over whether you can still do this? And if by leaving the scheme you then can't rejoin it till after your return from maternity - is there anything to stop you reducing the sacrificed amount in the qualifying weeks to the minium so your salary is minimally affected and then upping it again before you go on ML so you receive the maxium benefit?
2)When your maternity pay starts they will carry on deducting the vouchers (assuming you still want them ) until you run out of occupational maternity pay. If you are only receiving SMP from the start then they won't be deducted even from the 90% bit?
3) When you run out of non SMP pay the employer must carry on providing the vouchers at the usual limit free of any charge to you. They cannot claim that money back from the state or from you whether you return to work or not and are therefore effectively paying up to £243 towards your childcare whilst you are on leave?

It's 3) that I find totally stunning tbh. It's good from a woman's pov - but terrible from the employers and I fear it may discourage them from offering the scheme. Why would the law basically compel them to pay towards a womans childcare even if she isn't proposing to return to their employment. I don't understand why this provision (if I'm reading it right) has been deemed necessary tbh. Can anybody explain where the sex discrimination part comes in - or am I being thick.

America - so glad that this thread has helped Double bonus eh? A baby and some 'free' childcare

Northernlurker - will try and answer your questions but we, as an HR department, are still trying to find our way with this new legislation aswell!

1. Still not sure whether it is 'illegal' to stop your vouchers during your qualifying weeks and then restarting them to get the free ones - my organisation (an NHS one) has said that staff cannot do this as they feel this is having your cake and eating it - but I don't know if this is a legal view or whether it is just their way of mitigating their losses.

2. Again, not sure about whether vouchers can be deducted from the 90% part (for the first 6 weeks) - Sparkle should know more about that as that is the position she is in. Again, my organisation generally pays more than SMP so I don't think this has been discussed at all.

3. Yes - amazing as it may sound, the vouchers cannot be deducted from SMP so once all Occupational pay has been used, the organisation has to give you the vouchers and they cannot claim them back from either the state or yourself on your return. So for those businesses that just pay SMP, (depending on the answer to number 2), they have to technically fund £243 worth of childcare vouchers each month for the full 12 months that women can now have off - which is obviously a LOT of money.

The reason for this is there was an amendment to the sex discrimination act regarding non-cash benefits - and, in a nutshell, it states that you cannot deprive a woman on maternity leave of non-cash benefits that she would receive if she wasn't on maternity leave - otherwise you are discriminating against her. The other point of the change is the confirmation that non-cash benefits cannot be deducted from SMP - which when linked together produces the ruling about childcare vouchers.

Hope this makes sense. Am just off to have some tea so I have tried to do this quickly so sorry if it is a bit garbled

The way I read it in the ACAS booklet we got was that is is designed to stop employers taking things like company cars, gym membership etc off women who are on AML. The vouchers are an unfortunate (from an employers point of view) side effect.

Thanks Ceebee that's great - I'll look out for further updates! I have to say it does concern me somewhat that this may put employers off the schemes. It was basically cost neutral for them but now they will have to pay out up to nearly £3000 per woman on ML - well I fear it may be a different matter.

NorthernLurker - I think you are correct that it will deter companies from offering the scheme which I do think is a shame - however, as I am also going to benefit from it, although not to the extent of £3000 unfortunately, whether I agree or not with the ruling I am still entitled to my 'free' vouchers.