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As announced in the Queen's Speech, the Government is going ahead with plans to introduce flexible paternity leave.
This could see new fathers enjoy up to six months of paternity leave.
Business leaders are very upset, saying this will be a nightmare to manage. What do you think?
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1I think it's a wonderful idea. What's good for the goose is better for the gander.
Valentine.
Posted on 10 May 2012 |
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4When fathers start giving birth to a child , breast feeding etc yes 100%. Part of reason a women needs maternity leave often is the get over the physical scars from birth. C sections need months to recover as do normal births, breast feeding is mother too. The country can't afford both parents off, neither can most families. It would be lovely though. But maybe 3 weeks ?? , its hard enough for companies to cope with mothers let alone fathers off, I would have loved my husband to have lots of time off but I needed it more as I had the section not him !
Posted on 10 May 2012 |
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56what absolute nonsense!! a mothers role is to raise the child she has given birth to. it is expected of a father to help and be involved but giving time off will not turn a bad father into a good one. i am all for equal opportunity for women but this sounds like the sort of stupidity the loony left used to be responsible for.
Posted on 10 May 2012 | Love 2 loves
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4When fathers start giving birth to a child , breast feeding etc yes 100%. Part of reason a women needs maternity leave often is the get over the physical scars from birth. C sections need months to recover as do normal births, breast feeding is mother too. The country can't afford both parents off, neither can most families. It would be lovely though. But maybe 3 weeks ?? , its hard enough for companies to cope with mothers let alone fathers off, I would have loved my husband to have lots of time off but I needed it more as I had the section not him !
Posted on 10 May 2012 |
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66More re-arranging of the deck chairs on the Titanic by the clueless, out of touch elite.
Do you think China cares about such nonsense or India either? Of course not they are too busy building their empires, churning out super-smart people from universities with incredibly high work ethics that cost a fraction of what we in the western democracies cost. So what is our answer to that? Yep more irrelevant social legislation that piles on cost, is less work/business orientated and just shortens the journey to oblivion.
These new economies are already walking all over us buying up our national debts and keeping our dependency on the drug of consumer credit in full swing. Our so called leaders are too dumb and blinkered to care or notice.
Posted on 10 May 2012 | Love 2 loves
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61I think bertiesmithard, JOHN MAXWELL and Hardtruth are missing the point.
The new legislation proposed is about choice. If the mother wants to stay at home then that is fine, the father will get 2 weeks paternity as they do now.
However, in situations where the mother WANTS to go back to work before they have used their maternity leave, the proposal is that this time can be transferred to the father.
There are many relationships these days where the female earns more than the male and it makes financial sense for the woman to go back to work. The man may then take time off to look after the child (if the parents want someone to stay home with the child that is). Why not make it easier for the woman to go back to work earlier by allowing the male to get some payment for the first few months off?
At the end of the day, the current system does not work for everyone. Choice is the only way we can approach a system that does.
Posted on 10 May 2012 |
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66killick_becki I see the point point all too starkly I am afraid. I see first hand every day what our global competitors and economies are doing and I despair with what the EU in general and UK PLC in particular is doing. Too much focus and imbalance on the wrong things like wind turbines, human rights and social legislation that will cost us dear. You had better believe it because our economic statistics say it is real and hard already and it will get worse.
Current paternal and maternal legisltation is already harming small to medium size businesses and is a dragging anchor on larger businesses. All our leaders will succeed in doing is to make it worse and then in the next line of spin they tell us how committed they are to fixing our economy. You cannot have it both ways. It may all seem very sensible, mature and responsible to extend parental legislation but this comes at a very high cost and who the hell is thinking about that?
Posted on 10 May 2012 | Love 3 loves
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0I agree with both Becki and Vee. A parent of 2 who has had a C section and breast feed both my children, it is all about life choices and what suits that couple at the time. I could quite easily have returned to work before my 6 months were up. I agree not all fathers are cut out for parenting it is very demanding, yet there are those that do not wish to miss out on what us moms get to enjoy exclusively for the first 6 months.
To be honest they should just rename it and call it Parental leave - to cover any parent wishing to take time off for their new born/newly adopted child whether male or female.
For employers it surely must be the same as sorting out sick pay, when the benefit claim starts and stops it just restarts for the other.
Posted on 10 May 2012 | Love 0 loves
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62Hardtruth may have missed the finer points but he (she) is mainly right. The only employers that can afford 6 months paid leave are in the public sector or some parts of the financial industry. Guess who pays for that. It has one benefit and that is the possibility of the hard working overtaxed professionals may be able to afford to have a family to help balance the high numbers of non working fast breeding families.
More seriously, aren't there more important things to sort out first as this is a relatively minor issue because Civil servants already have this facility for mothers and the private sector can't afford it anyway because they are overburdened paying for civil servants' benefit. What the government should be doing is working out how they are going to pay for this and all of the other things we can't afford.
Posted on 10 May 2012 | Love 2 loves
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130No NO NO. why should I as an employer be penalised for a father's decision to procreate, it's time people took responsibility for their own actions and stopped expecting employers to pay for things like this. If you can't afford to bring up a child then keep it in your trousers. I waited until I could afford to pay for what ever was necessary to bring up a child and took a short time off as holiday when it was born. Do the same and stop expecting me to pay for your private life as well as paying you to work.
Posted on 10 May 2012 | Love 5 loves
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74Yes....as to leave everything to one's wife/partner is sexist (perhaps?) and inequitable (definitely).
I took 3 months unpaid leave when our first child was born and although it was for months 5 through until 8, it was such a marvellous time and I'm so pleased with the bonding we made.
I was so glad I was able to arrange for the time off work and I'd NEVER change that for anything.
Posted on 10 May 2012 | Love 0 loves
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373This is another example of the namby pamby state. While is would be nice to allow the father to take an extended leave of absence to be with, or look after, a young one, we don't live in a nice world.
We are currently being told by our rulers that they need to tax us more so that they can bail out all those idiotic countries that decided to use a unified currency (Euro). How can they even think about such a benefit when they are telling hundreds of thousands of civil servants that they will lose a good chunk of their pension rights.
It would appear that this government is spending coin that it doesn't have, or expecting others to spend coin that they don't have. It is already a nightmare for many businesses to factor in pregnancy to their day to day running, but they have to, because it is law, and they manage to cope. Imagine having to factor in paternity leave?
(It might balance more if both partners work for the same employer, but the in the majority of partnerships/marriages they usually work for different employers).
In quite a few cases, mothers take their full nine month entitlement, with the promise of returning to work at the end of their leave, only to jack in their job when their return date arrives. How many people have missed an opportunity for work because someone has kept open their job on a false promise?
Still, our leaders have to be seen as doing the right thing, so they will allow us men to take months off work, to look after our little ones, while simultaneously taxing us into poverty.
Besides, like quite a few have said, I thought the maternity leave was so that the woman could recover from what is probably the most traumatic thing she will ever go through. After all, the woman does all the hard work, and this is supposed to be the reward for putting her body through hell.
Oh, and if a woman wants to return to work early, there is no law stopping her. The nine months is the maximum for maternity leave, and many do return to work earlier.
Posted on 10 May 2012 |
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80This will be an administrative nightmare to operate and grossly expensive in civil servants. It will also be very open to fraud.
The big question is who will pay for this? Great if it is self financing, i.e., unpaid six months block absence from work (especially for essential servicemen, doctors, firemen and the like).
But if the LibDem originators of this ill thought out and impracticle idea intend that the six months is with pay of some sort then I hope they have considered how to fund it. If they decide employers are to pay there will be two results -
1. Prices will rise to pay for it which means that it basically an employer administered tax.
2. Women within the child bearing age will find jobs harder to get.
If it is intended that the tax payers should fund the costs then that means that everyone earning, children or not, will be paying for the six months of leasurely idleness of the proud new fathers.
If a statutory rate of pay is declared, then those who normally earn above the rate will not be incentivised to take six months of less while those on low pay or state benefits will jump at extra money.
Then there is the nightmare of parents whose child is removed by social workers - do they still get the six months off or does it go to a foster father or is it saved for an adoptive father?
This is a typical LibDem idea that has not really been thought through. Sounds great when trumpeted by the politicians but absolutely ridiculous when examined in the cold light of day.
WHO WILL PAY?
Posted on 10 May 2012 | Love 2 loves
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881This proposal is very fair to employees but totally impracticable for employers.
Most small businesses can't cope with the current maternity arrangements. At least they have about 6 months warning at the moment and expect to cover 12 months leave.
If the leave entitlement is transferred to the father, it is liable to be on a much shorter notice. How is the small employer expected to find temporary cover in time?
Also, the temporary employee replacing the mother would be out of a job before the end of contract. It would make it much more difficult to find Maternity Leave cover.
Mike
Posted on 10 May 2012 | Love 1 love
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130@ The Bank Manager
Life is inequitable, the female gives birth the male doesn't. No amount of paternity leave will change that. You sound rather sore that you had to take your leave unpaid, tough, you are lucky that your employer could afford to let you have that amount of time off, most of us can't afford it as simply having to replace the function of an employee costs a fortune and as far as I am concerned if this legislation gets passed I'll only employ single men and they can sod off if they get a partner and look like reproducing.
Posted on 10 May 2012 | Love 2 loves
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33I was under the impression that maternity pay is tax deductable (or rather that the Govt pays the employer)? Why should Mom and Dad not be able to share this allowance as best fits them so she could maybe go back to work earlier and swap out for Dad - meaning that the family is less likely to need expensive childcare help, and that Dad sees Baby as his responsibility (joy) too.
As a way of encouraging families to work, this might actually be sensible. As for the 'we can't afford it' crowd, presumably we can't afford for maternity leave at all, since the proposal as I understand it just moves the allowance around not increases it.
If we need a parallel, Married Persons tax allowance seems similar? If he works, he can claim extra for a dependant. If she works, she can claim for hubby. If they both do, neither gets the bonus, I think, but get their own personal allowances? But no longer a Married Man's allowance.
Nosbort - you do know that's illegal, right? Firing someone cos his wife's had a baby is sort of low, isn't it?
BTW, I'm assuming this also lets Other-mum share parenting with Birth-mum; and let's Dad &Dad share parenting out as suits them too.
Posted on 11 May 2012 | Love 0 loves
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130@ mambach
where did I mention firing anyone because their partner has a baby? I just make the point, albeit hyperbolically, that small employers can't afford to replace an employee in the short term because, no the government don't 'pay' for the employee and that isn't the cost anyway, it's the lost productivity and training/employment/agency costs for the short term replacement that are the problem. This potential legislation is all very well but in many cases the outcome will be that the employee hasn't got a job to go back to because the employer can no longer continue. Small firms can't take 6 months off earning.
Posted on 11 May 2012 | Love 1 love
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61@nosbort and others citing issues with small businesses.
So if the woman works for a small business and the man for the public sector, by your argument it would benefit the small business for the man to make part of the maternity leave.
Posted on 11 May 2012 | Love 0 loves
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881K_B
That still doesn't work because the maternity leave cover, hired at great expense, then has to be sacked ahead of schedule. The original costs of hiring and training have to be spread across a much shorter period.
Also it will be much harder to find cover if the period is liable to be reduced significantly. And the pay rates required would increase.
Mike
Posted on 11 May 2012 | Love 0 loves
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0Best solution for the children is : One parent works and one parent looks after the child/children. Trouble is that people want to keep up with the jonases. troble we have with youngsters to-day is that they were 'farmed out' when young. Family life is ruined.
Posted on 11 May 2012 | Love 0 loves
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881The other problem with transferable parental allowance is that by the time they have both had their time off neither employer will really want either of the parents in case of subsequent episodes.
When we had children there was no childcare around and no grandparents either, so it was a case of one of us giving up work completely. There was a small maternity allowance but nothing like what is paid now. The present generation really don't know how lucky they are already and insist on more, pricing themselves and the rest of us out of the world market.
Mike
Posted on 11 May 2012 | Love 0 loves
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74Hey nosbort. If you believe I sounded 'sore' about the unpaid leave, you could not have been far from the truth. I italicised because I wanted to reflect that I was happy to be without the money and instead, with my first child.
I understand your point, but I work to live and not live to work. If I gave you the wrong impression - that was not my intention.
Similarly, when I took my 3 months off, the Team within which I worked covered for me, because we were a 'Team' and that's what we did. We were close-knit and supported each other.
I discussed the situation with my colleagues and they were happy for me, with many of the ladies in the Team chuffed about my stance.
With your business (whether a small or medium enterprise), I appreciate that to 'lose' a member of staff would be a challenge, but under employment legislation, you cannot discriminate and for you to make your profits and live the life the way you want to lead it, you get to make choices, so why can't your staff??
Posted on 12 May 2012 | Love 0 loves
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653Another good reason why I'll never have another manufacturing business in the UK as I once did. At least I'm helping create jobs in the USA and not China, but I had wanted to start some production here. Large companies can absorb the costs of these absurd regulations but most small businesses cannot. It isn't debatable, it's fact. There will be an incentive to small family businesses where these regulations won't be relevant and a boost to employment of older workers.
Posted on 13 May 2012 | Love 0 loves
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129electricblue, well written.
I read that research by economists shows that regulations and red tape do not affect investment decisions. Bet they only investigated big companies, small companies, which create the vast majority of jobs in the country, are severely affected by it. But our politicians, who have no experience of the real world themselves, believe the rubbish churned out by academic ivory towers.
Posted on 13 May 2012 | Love 0 loves
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