On That Maternity Leave
Thursday, October 15, 2009 at 04:52PM I think Harriet's going to be upset.
Labour's equal rights laws risk harming the prospects of women in the workplace, one of Britain's top businesswomen said last night.
Amen to that. Small firms that employ women of child-bearing age must be mad.
Nichola Pease, deputy chairman of JO Hambro capital management and a mother of three, said excessive maternity leave and eye-watering sex discrimination payouts could backfire on women. She denied allegations of sexism in the City, claiming most women did not rise through the ranks because of their own choices rather than any prejudice against them. And she suggested bosses were reluctant to employ women for fear they could go on to have lots of children supported by Britain's over-generous maternity leave system.
There's your gender pay gap right there, by the way. Employers aren't interested in your salary so much as the total cost of employing you. One of those costs is the legal right to 52 weeks of maternity leave with pay - that's right, an entire year, paid, at zero productivity for the firm and she can inform her employer eleven months into it that she's not coming back at all. If women want pay parity they should campaign against laws which make it less economic to employ them.
Sure, GlobalMegaCorp Inc can absorb these government-inflated costs but its smaller competitors cannot (which is why GlobalMegaCorp favours them). I heard a caller to LBC this morning tell of why she had to close her hair salon; her three employees became pregnant within weeks of each other and opted for the full maternity leave. The owner couldn't afford that and the costs of employing replacements - so the closed sign went up. Well done Harman.
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Reader Comments (34)
Good post.
The likes of Harman don't seem to realise that if you increase the costs of hiring women (or ethnic minorities or whatever the mascot of the day is) by extreme maternity leave entitlements or by putting the burden of proof on the employer in employment tribunals then fewer women will be employed. If things cost more then demand falls.
Of course sexual discrimination payouts would also drop if . . .and stay with me here . . .employers reduced their sexual discrimination.
Ms. Pease, the filthy rich daughter of a filthy rich family hardly worked her way to the top, she was born there. She has about as much credibility on the struggles of women in the workplace as Ghengis Khan.
A years maternity leave may be to long, but the suggestion of none (as Ms. Pease apparently credits the practices in the Far East) are absurd if a society wishes to encourage families. Certainly here on ATW I read of those who constantly bemoan European birthrates and the destruction of the family unit. Such sentiments go out the window at the opportunity to attack women in the workplace through a proxy such as Ms. Pease (who apparently only works 4 day weeks herself to be with her children - odd she didn't mention that in this article).
Reasonable accomodations for the fact that women have babies and the resulting recovery period and their
male partners do not resulting in the fair and sensible idea of maternity. So long as it is reasonable it provides a shared benefit to the man and the woman, and of course to the society at large.
>>If women want pay parity they should campaign against laws which make it less economic to employ them.<<
If you were really interested in pay parity, or the rights of women etc., you would probably see the solution staring you in the face: parental leave granted equally to men and women. It works in Sweden and would work in Britain.
Why, it might help even shore up that white bulwark against Islam etc. you are all apparently so concerned about, as mahons pointed out.
"Of course sexual discrimination payouts would also drop if . . .and stay with me here . . .employers reduced their sexual discrimination. "
It costs a fortune regardless of whether they are found guilty or not, when you also consider that the burden of proof means employers have to prove their innocence it is clear that employers can't reduce their risk by not discriminitating against women.
"If you were really interested in pay parity, or the rights of women etc., you would probably see the solution staring you in the face: parental leave granted equally to men and women. It works in Sweden and would work in Britain."
If fathers did take a substantial time off, this would just change the situation from their being a pay gap between men and women to between parents and non parents.
"Of course sexual discrimination payouts would also drop if . . .and stay with me here . . .employers reduced their sexual discrimination. "
It costs a fortune regardless of whether they are found guilty or not, when you also consider that the burden of proof means employers have to prove their innocence it is clear that employers can't reduce their risk by not discriminitating against women.
"If you were really interested in pay parity, or the rights of women etc., you would probably see the solution staring you in the face: parental leave granted equally to men and women. It works in Sweden and would work in Britain."
If fathers did take a substantial time off, this would just change the situation from their being a pay gap between men and women to between parents and non parents.
parental leave granted equally to men and women.
Foolish concept, for obvious reasons
Ross - Then shift the burden of proof, make it on the employee (as it is here in the U.S.).
I run a small business and think it totally unfair that my business can stand or fall on the whim of my employees as to whether they have children.
I found myself in the position not too long ago where I was effectively running my business, working very long hours, solely to support an employee who had not been with me that long and subsequently did not return. To add insult to injury, her partner did not work the entire time that she was on maternity leave so I supported the entire family whilst having to reduce the standard of living for my own.
Maternity leave and paternity leave may be a good idea but should be paid for out of general taxation and not by lottery.
John Arthur
Too true.
Has anyone establshed that the burden of proof is on the employer?
And you wonder why employers are reluctant to add staff
Even if the govt pays for the benefit, most private businesses are really lean these days --including teams in large companies
It is a very real burden for the rest of the staff to pick up the slack while someone is out for a sustained period
I am not arguing the pros and cons of maternity leave itself -- but the burden on small and medium businesses must be very great indeed. How could it not be. What are they supposed to do when a key employee is missing for up to a year?
aileen -
It's a two-stage process:
http://www.out-law.com/page-7720
The person bringing the case must prove that they were treated differently by an employer, and that that treatment could have been as a result of sexual discrimination. If they do, the employer must then prove that it did not discriminate on grounds of sex, which is notoriously hard to do.
Incidentally, this comes from an EU directive dressed up as statute law by Parliament.
Employers aren't reluctant to add staff, however they are often reluctant to compensate them fairly. A maternity leave absence is essentially a disability or sick leave absence. But since those type of absences also involve men you find less complaints about them, and certainly less tenors and barritones in the chorus of protest.
mahons
I think you'd be astonished at how small the profit margin and margin of error most small businesses --restaurants, beauty shops, small groceries - operate under
One reason why so many go bust in the first year.
These guys are not exactly swimming in money, and they cannot afford to pay top dollar
Phantom - If they can't meet basic legal obligations then perhaps they should go bust.
It all depends on how you define " basic legal obligations"
You may wind up with only family and single proprietor businesses, fast food joints, mega corporations and the dead weight of government employment if you set the employee cost bar too high for small companies.
And one easy way for small companies in such areas as IT etc is to outsource the whole thing to India, easily done in the modern era. Be careful of the burdens that you want imposed- killing the golden goose, etc.
mahons
You must never have operated a business
Most employers try to be very fair to the employees but they have to be fair to themselves as well
The days of Dickensian work houses has very much passed
It is the big companies who are outsourcing to India and other 3rd World locations, not out of need but out of greed.
Disablity Insurance is a basic legal right in our state, so is worker's compensation. Lets face it, no one here has proclaimed small business are ruined by disability absences in general because that would not limit the target workers to one sex.
The conscience of a liberal, eh?
If they can't meet basic legal obligations then perhaps they should go bust.
Meaning, if small firms can't meet the costs of contrived political deals - they should go bust.
If small firms can't pay largesse to client groups on behalf of politicians - they should go bust.
If a small businessman can't pony up his own money to keep someone at home for a year, because a criminal politician said he should - he should be ruined.
You must be a lawyer.
I am indeed a lawyer and like most lawyers I know that the folks who come crying to us for help the most are the ones who complain about lawyers such as yourself.
I advocated for basic legal obligations and not contrived political deals, for paying largess to client groups, or keeping people at home for a year - all stemming from your imagination which only yesterday helped you fabricate a claim about the US health care plan.
SMP (statutory maternity pay) is payable at a rate of 90 per cent of the employee's AWE for the first six weeks. There is no upper limit. The remaining 33 weeks are paid at either:
* the standard weekly rate of £123.06 (in 2009/10), or
* 90 per cent of the woman's AWE if this is lower than the standard weekly rate
You can recover 92 per cent of your SMP payments from HMRC.
However, if your total annual National Insurance payments are £45,000 or less you can recover 104.5 per cent.
http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/
mahons
You are correct in that this is seen as a disability type thing. But I think that's bad thinking, unless we speak of the first weeks at most.
This is really meant as a support for the mother and the family - which can certainly be justified up to a point - but it is not as though mothers are " disabled " six weeks after giving birth. Not the ones that I've seen. They have unique burdens, which typically are more than the father's, which should be recognized, and or helped with.
But the real and unequal burdens placed on small or other businesses should not be blown off either. It's a real issue.
Just a wee point for those working in the public sector the bill for maternity leave will fall at the feet of the tax payer (or just even more reduced care for the elderly.) But I've got a novel idea. How about paying men enough to support their own families with the mothers rearing their own children rather than the state. But then as Simone de Beauvoir said "No woman should be authorised to stay at home to raise her children. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice too many women will make that one."
Sure, GlobalMegaCorp Inc can absorb these government-inflated costs but its smaller competitors cannot (which is why GlobalMegaCorp favours them). I heard a caller to LBC this morning tell of why she had to close her hair salon; her three employees became pregnant within weeks of each other and opted for the full maternity leave. The owner couldn't afford that and the costs of employing replacements - so the closed sign went up. Well done Harman.
Did the owner not know that as a small employer she could have recovered all of the cost? Evidently Pete Moore is unaware that SMP is almost totally paid for by the government, not the empoloyer:
"Recovering SMP: You can recover 92 per cent of your SMP payments from HMRC. However, if your total annual National Insurance payments are £45,000 or less you can recover 104.5 per cent."
Still, never let the facts stop a good rant, eh Pete?
Peter - game, set and match.
Phantom - that period is the medical community consensus (8 weeks for c-section).
OK, but the link Peter gives speaks of 39 weeks.
Even if there is no direct economic loss to the employer in paying the benefit,, that's a really, really long time for someone with any skills to be away from a small shop / small team in a larger company. Very hard to plan or divide up the work among the rest of a small staff.
If you are running lean, as we all are, you really have to think of hiring a new employee to replace the one that has been away for most of a year.
Don't think that creates a unique burden in a small shop?
"Even if there is no direct economic aspect in paying the benefit,, that's a really, really long time for someone with any skills to be away from a small shop / small team in a larger company."
Exactly, three experienced employees can't simply be replaced by any three people off the street.
Phantom - And yet business seems to manage. Do you believe National Guardsmen should lose their jobs for being deployed to Iraq? Jurors should lose their jobs for lengthy trial service?
I've seen some "I heard this story on the radio" statements here, but what are the real statistics of this alleged undue burden on business?
The benefit to society overall outweighs the cost. Like a lot of things.
We're not talking about the same things - maternity leave is not nearly as liberal in the US as it has been in Europe - a Europe where over the recent decade and more employers have been extremely reluctant to hire new staff, esp in certain places like France, for this and many other economic and flexibility reasons.
The high unemployment that Europe has seen indicates that business may not manage so well at all.
I don't think the National Guard should have been sent to Iraq - thats not what it was set up for - and I have a real problem with long trials in the first place. Long trials should be very rare things, but there would be more pregnant women than there would be jurors stuck on endless cases in any event.
>>The high unemployment that Europe has seen indicates that business may not manage so well at all.<<
Canada allows a generous 50 weeks paid maternity leave and the US gives zero.
That must have been some wild stampede of Canadian business across the border when that law was introduced 10 years ago.
I'm an accountant and I have many small business clients. So I'm naturally opposed to anything that increases the burden on them, and there is no doubt that small business suffers from the disruption caused by maternity absences. But at least the government fully compensates them financially. Also, we are always hearing about the problem of falling birth rates, so penalising women financially for having babies seems stupid.
But I am against making SMP even more generous than it is now. If employers and employees want to agree on something more, that's up to them, but the statutory maximum period of leave should not be increased.
New Jersey, California, and Washington have paid maternity leave
Base Canadian maternity leave is only fifteen weeks, unless the child is ill when it can be more
What is it with the Euro socialists? They expect everyone else to pay. And to say that there is no burden on a business because the government pays them is ridiculous. It's not free. They are taking your money to pay someone to stay home and not work for an entire year. I'm sure that business taxes are atrocious and in that way it DOES hurt business.
Why don't people understand that the government money is NOT government money? It's YOUR money. Do you just forget all of the time?
For my maternity leave, I paid into a short term/long term disability plan. I paid for it. When I decided to stay home with my kids for 7 years I didn't expect someone else to pay me. I understood that my 'career' track would be interrupted. So what? Why would I expect to advance as if I had put those 7 years contributing to the economy in a different way than raising my kids?