Should Working Women be Made to Choose Between Career and Family?
The United States is a terrible country to be in if you are a working expectant mother and want paid maternity leave. Moms get a total of 12 unpaid weeks of maternity leave and that’s it. According to the World Health Organization, the time necessary for recovery from childbirth will vary according to a woman’s individual experience. They suggest that a minimum of 16 weeks absence from the workforce is necessary for a woman to recover from child birth and accommodate breastfeeding. In America, for such an industrious country, we treat our pregnant women pretty awful. Most companies don’t even guarantee them a job when they come back. In some ways this country still treats its women like second class citizens when it comes to what we need to do to raise a family. If women decide to stay home and raise a family, then they are considered lazy and not contributing. They get comments like, “‘Gee, it must be nice to get to stay home all day.” If they work and get pregnant and need time off to have the baby and stay home with the newborn for a couple of months, then she has to worry about her job still being there when she gets ready to come back. She may get two whole months off, without pay if she’s lucky. Two months is not enough time to give birth, and adjust to a baby, for most women, others do just fine and that is good. Don’t punish the one’s that need more time though.
The labor laws state that you are entitles to 12 weeks of unpaid leave IF you satisfy the following criteria. The company you work for should have more than 50 employs within 75 miles of the site you work at. You need to work with your employer a period of 12 months, but don’t need to be consecutive, and have at least 1250 hours during the 12 months, If you fall below those hours, they can treat you anyway they want. Many women who get back to work after their 12 maternity leave find their jobs filled and they get “laid off.” The only way they may go after their employer is if it falls within the before-said criteria, so if you only put in 1245 hours within the last 12 months of work, you can forget about making a claim. However, if you have done all of the above then your company is in violation of Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and you can make a claim.
If you work for a smaller company, less than 50 employees, then your employer can get away with treating you any way they want. Maternity leave is generally restricted to long term, permanent employees. Industries with high proportions of women and casual workers, such as retail and hospitality, are generally less likely to offer paid maternity leave. Don’t think that just because you may have a female boss that she will be more on your side, or may fight harder for you to get what you really deserve. I have not seen too many company’s with either sex employer treat their pregnant employees any different. It seems that within this country, most companies and employers think along the same lines. You can be replaced. The really sad thing is you can probably be replaced by someone who will get paid less money than they were paying you.
One thing to remember, get EVERYTHING IN WRITING. It might be a good idea to find out what kind of maternity leave provisions your company has in store for their employees before you get pregnant if at all possible. Talk with your boss and try to get a feel for the situation. Will doctor visits during your pregnancy be a problem? What if you have a hard pregnancy time, will they be OK with that, or are you going to run into grumpy attitudes on you being away from work so much. Will you need a doctor’s excuse for every appointment, although that may be a good idea to go ahead and do anyway, make sure to cover all bases. There are laws against discrimination of pregnant women, but proving that you were fired for being pregnant may be harder than you realize. Many women have found that their services were well and good until they tell their boss about their pregnancy. Then it seems every little thing is being picked apart and they find themselves being “let go” because their work is “inadequate.”
I think there are organizations that are fighting for women’s rights in third world countries, but maybe we need to keep the fight closer to home. There is still a lot of discrimination right here in the good ole U.S.A. Now I do love this country just in case someone is reading this and say’s, “if you don’t like how you get treated here, then you can leave.” Well no I can’t, I would rather try and fix what is wrong and continue to live in the country I was born and raised in. In places like Australia, 19 of Australia’s top 20 trading partners provide some form of paid maternity leave. In 14 of these countries, paid leave is a statutory entitlement. The WHO, Australian government publications and community and professional groups in Australia including the AMA advocate breastfeeding for a newborn. They recognize breastfeeding as one of the most important contributions to infant health, including improved growth, immunity and development.
Paid maternity leave would support women who want to take time out of the workforce to establish and maintain breastfeeding. It would also assist women who plan to breastfeed their children beyond six weeks of age.
The purpose of paid maternity leave is not to enforce a period of leave on women but to ensure that financial concerns do not force women back to work before they recover from childbirth.
International Comparisons
� All OECD countries provide paid maternity leave except for Australia and the US and New Zealand (until 1 July 2002). Most OECD paid maternity leave schemes are funded by social security or social insurance funds. The amount of paid leave offered through these schemes varies from 55% of average weekly insurable earnings in Canada to 100 percent of the basic daily wage in a number of European countries including France. The duration of paid leave under these schemes varies from eight weeks (e.g. Switzerland) to 450 days (eg Sweden). In Europe social insurance schemes are the most common way of funding paid maternity leave. In Sweden paid maternity leave is funded by an insurance scheme to which employers, employees and government contribute;
âÂ?¢ The New Zealand plan for paid parental leave, to be introduced on 1 July 2002 provides 12 weeks’ paid leave to eligible women and men. Up to half of female wage and salary earners will receive 80 per cent of their earnings and about one third 100 per cent of previous earnings. The period of paid leave may be taken by a natural or adoptive parent and can be shared with a spouse or same sex partner where they would have been eligible for parental leave. Employees will remain eligible for 52 weeks’ unpaid leave;
âÂ?¢ Eighteen OECD countries provide paternity or family leave, and in 13 of these leave is paid. In most cases either parent can take this leave on top of a woman’s right to maternity leave.;
âÂ?¢ International instruments, such as CEDAW and the International Labor Organization’s Maternity Protection Convention (ILO 183) recognize paid maternity leave as a specific measure that fulfills State obligations to provide women with equal employment rights. 158 of CEDAW’s 163 signatories provide paid maternity leave. Only Australia, Lesotho, New Zealand (until 1 July 2002) Papua New Guinea, Swaziland and the USA do not.
Funding Options
Paid maternity leave may be financed by government, employers, employees or a combination of each.
� (Note: The International Labor Organization does not support a funding model for paid maternity leave which makes employers individually and directly liable for payments to employees unless such an arrangement is negotiated at the national level)
The Federal Government provides a range of income support payments to families to assist with the costs of raising children, including newborns and provides other payments to parents through allowances and tax benefits. Paid maternity leave is not a replacement for these existing payments.
The paper sets out five models for funding paid maternity leave. Other options are possible and submissions exploring other options are welcome.
� A government funded universal payment: A non-means tested payment through the social security system to women in work at the time of birth and a maternity assistance payment to women who are unemployed or not in the labor force at the time of birth.
� A government funded employment based model: A flat payment would be made to women directly from the government through the tax or social security system or to employees by employers who would be reimbursed by the government.
� A social insurance/superannuation style scheme: Maternity leave would be paid from a fund to which employers, employees and government contribute.
� An employer levy: Employers would be required to pay a levy based on total salaries paid by the organization in order to avoid disincentives to employ women. Small business, for example those with less than 20 employees, could possibly be exempt from the levy.
� An individual employer funded payment: Employers would be required by legislation to provide paid maternity leave to eligible female employees. It could be a top-up payment for women with above average weekly earnings or be paid in conjunction with a government funded employment based model or a government funded universal payment.
It would be nice if the women working in America could be treated with the respect they deserve when they decide to start a family. Moms would not have the worries of hoping that her company will still need and want her after being gone for the few months it would take to give birth, (which even at this day and age is still a health risk for all woman), and enjoy being a new mother before coming back to a job she loved and wanted to keep.
