In the UK, maternity leave works like
this:
All pregnant employees are entitled to take 52 weeks' statutory maternity leave around the birth of their child. However, an employee must meet certain qualifying conditions to receive statutory maternity pay (SMP). You, as the employer, pay the SMP but you can reclaim all or most of it from the government.
It works
this way:
* SMP - SAP - SPP
o if total gross NI contributions over the year are equal to or less than £45,000 100% plus 4.5% compensation can be reclaimed
o if total gross NI contributions over the year are greater than £45,000 only 92% can be reclaimed with no compensation percentage
* SSP
o if 13% of the gross NI paid in the tax month is less than than the SSP paid, the difference between the two can be reclaimed
It's even clearer
here and
here. The mother is
also entitled to:
# Child Benefit
# Tax Credits
# Child Trust Funds
In Sweden, it comprises part government and part employer funding. In Australia, there is
a proposal:
The paid maternity leave scheme recommended by NFAW to the Productivity Commission will put small business on an equal footing with large organisations. The proposed scheme provides all employees with 28 weeks paid parental leave and 4 weeks paid paternity leave paid through a fund made up of a government contribution and a pooled levy on all employers of less than 1 per cent of labour costs.
Small to medium enterprises are at a disadvantage compared to Governments and big businesses in recruiting staff in a tight labour market when it comes to the attractiveness of remuneration packages they are able to offer. This disadvantage will continue if the government introduces a scheme that requires employers to replace all, or part, of the income of women on paid maternity leave.
Naturally, women are fearful that employers will take a dim view of extended maternity leave and
regulations are in place to prevent this.
Right, so back in the UK, a small business employer taking on female staff gains net 4.5% of the amount paid if she gets pregnant and has the child. Now to calculate costs to the business. Whilst it is reclaimable, it is not instantly payable and there is a net loss associated with it overall. This is why SME businesses are
crying out loudly against it because the figures, whilst appearing to add up in the long run, in fact cause short term difficulties, not least in having to employ another staff member, who in turn has certain rights.
Personally, this blogger thinks there
must be a sharing of the load between state, employer and the employed herself [with partner makes it easier].
Ellee's call for extended maternity was never in dispute here. However, one comment from a woman in the Australian workplace [but the principle is the same] put
a different point of view:
Rebekah of Melbourne posted at 11:53am June 13, 2008
I am a 29yo female & would like to start a family in the next couple of years, however I do not believe that there should be paid maternity leave. It is my choice to have children & I do not expect my employer or the government to pay me whilst on leave. My partner & I have worked out that we can afford to live on his wage, however we are only able to do so because we bought a small older house in the outer suburbs & we don't have expensive cars. I also agree with the comments regarding potential discrimation against young female job seekers - I know that if I owned a small business I would avoid hiring young females if there was paid maternity leave.
Another commenter put this proposal:
Mel of WA Posted at 9:42am June 14, 2008
Employers should not be funding this scheme from their own pockets, and the taxpayer should not be expected to fund it either. What should happen is: either the employee makes arrangements to save up or live on their partner's wage so they can afford to have their child and take a year off work, or the employee works for four years at 80% pay, and then takes the fifth year off as maternity leave at 80% pay. That way the employer is not out of pocket by having to pay maternity leave as well as pay someone else to do the absent employee's job nor is the taxpayer is funding someone's decision to have kids.
Women in Britain would claim that because of the measly package offered at present, employees are very much contributing, in effect, even given the paternity provisions and this blogger agrees with that. But tripling is not only going to
cripple business, it is going to make an employer increasingly steer clear of child-bearing age women or else implement pre-employment conditions to minimize huge payouts in any financial year.
May we stop and catch our breath?
Trace our society and see what has really happened in the past decades. In the early part of last century, the extended family was the basic societal unit. In the late 50s, the nuclear family was the basic societal unit. Today, singles abound in little boxes across the west.
If we stop to count the cost of this, in financial terms, it is obvious that it is unsustainable. Financial strictures force people into finding solutions and the obvious solution is the extended family, which is quite socialist in nature. From each according to ability and to each according to needs. We are heading back to this as the squeeze grips harder and harder.
Two things come under intense pressure - the government disbursement of tax money and roofs over people's heads - there are not enough flats and houses and what there are can't be afforded. When money derived from taxes is disbursed, every taxpayer has a right to a say in how it is disbursed.
Maternity leave is given to people in work and the businesses giving it have the right to say how it should be disbursed.
Government policy is squeezing businesses through tax rates anyway, let alone through schemes like SMP and this most certainly snuffs out incentive - hence the flight of business offshore and overseas. Everyone, businesses included, are hurting because everything is ultimately interconnected. Government is only taxation anyway [plus autocratic legislation]. It all becomes us again in the end.
Those two commenters just quoted above bring out an alien concept in today's world - that the having of a child is a major financial burden which needs planning and financial preparation by the couple, utilizing all family resources possible
before the event. Government needs to contribute somewhat, as do employers but the decision is the couple's in the end and that entails sacrifices and responsibilities.
Whose responsibility is having a child in the end?
Where it gets really complicated is a girl who wants to live in her own flat with a child she had and where the father has departed. This is
sheer madness at the personal level because the figures for supporting it don't add up. I know two girls in this situation and the family has chipped in to support her as best they can. A girl going it totally alone, on the other hand, is in
an invidious position and it is now rampant in society, the US figure being 30%.
In the United Kingdom, there are 1.9 million single parents as of 2005, with 3.1 million children.[6] About 1 out of 4 families with dependent children are single-parent families. According to a survey done by the United Kingdom, 9% of single parents in the UK are fathers,[7] [8][9][10] UK poverty figures show that 47% of single parent families are below the Government-defined poverty line (after housing costs).[11]
So the girl eventually is either forced back into the family fold if she has one or if she doesn't, why not? There might have been an abusive father or there might be the simple desire to be independent. That is then paid for by state and employer. In other words, the taxpayer foots the bill for all these unmarried mothers.
Again I say that the state should do this to a point, by default but where is that cut-off point? This could go on forever, this train of thought but it is all halted by one truth - the cost of living swamps any income in this day and age. The moment the banks created a situation where the price of major items like houses and cars reached an unpayable level, then the only solution was credit.
This, in turn, broke the nexus between price and income and enabled house prices, for example, to go through the stratosphere. This is precisely what is happening in Russia today. Once on that path, we get where we currently are.
The unit of income and the unit of cost must now be completely redefined and brought back to affordable levels.
Everybody is indicating this but it's not happening. Who has the power to change this? Governments do plus the people they are dependent on - the banks. It always comes back to the banks who should be just repositories protecting people's cash but in fact have become much, much more. Will they voluntarily crank back prices?
Not on their own they won't. So it needs steely resolve from government, responding to public opinion, to force prices back to affordable levels and the last leader I can recall trying anything of this nature was Andrew Jackson. In the crash which would inevitably follow this government move, the whole formula is redefined.
It won't happen though because the alternative, the nanny state, confers power on an upper echelon and this blogger does not see that echelon as altruistic or philanthropic in nature.
Calling for the tripling of maternity leave is rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. It's relocating the hurt to another sector of society. There's a case for all to contribute - yes - but this is contributing to what is an out of kilter and unsustainable system in the first place.
Welshcakes is a champion of the single person being supported and she took umbrage at me putting such a person low on the list. The single person does have the burden of upkeeping a household, with all attendant costs and total costs, compared to a family, not that much less. She may also have a dependent - her pet and that needs paying for. Those who have not been in this situation cannot understand how a pet assumes a role of great importance in such a household and needs to be paid for. But it does need that and the owner gladly pays.
No one is asking for government and employer to pay for pets but the single is asking for a fairer redistribution overall. That was why I suggested 70% of the rate which the government pays families also going to singles. For this, I was called an ignorant fascist [see comments on the last maternity post].
That last maternity post called for a situation-based payout and why not? Should the state or employer pay for a person's voluntary decision to be be single or only for unavoidable singleness? One is a choice and the other a necessity.
Who determines this and for how much? Again I was called an ignorant fascist for suggesting that government [who delegates this to social security], essentially means a committee of men and women. You can't have it both ways. If the government pays out, then men and women within that government must decide how much. How is this fascist?
And one cannot ignore the macro-view - that the proliferation of single person households cannot be sustained in a society already groaning under the burden, let alone the population increases due to virtually free relocation within the EU, immigration and births.
What is fascist is the state's gathering of all into a nanny state where the cost of living is entirely unsustainable. That's where the real fascism is.