Quote:
Originally Posted by Halk
Yep, there's arguements against statutory maternity leave here.
Imagine you run a small company, you are going to hire someone to do the books. Do you hire a 25 year old woman who has just got married? Or do you think to yourself that she's going to miss 1 year out of the next three if she decides to have kids. It's also illegal to discriminate against women. If it's a small company how are you supposed to cover for someone for 6 months, and still keep their job open?
I can see why maternity leave is there, but I can also understand the problems with it. Personally I think people should be sensible enough to save up in advance, but that's not going to happen. There's really no easy answer I can think of other than a complicated complete revamp of national insurance to turn it into actual insurance against things like that.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Halk
Yes there are options. But do you think someone running a small business likes being forced to effectively pay someone twice, and have the hassle of someone coming in who doesn't know the job etc?
I'm not supporting either position though. I'm just pointing out there's a problem and I can see both sides of it.
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I don't think the company pays most of the cost for this, but the country does. It's one of the reasons our taxes are relatively high. It's the same with sick people. Let's say, I get an accident in which I break both my hands. I'm a computer programmer and thus are in need of my hands.
I can't work and my insurance will only pay for the hospital bills and such. My company can't fire me because of this, but they will have to hire somebody else to do my job. If it takes longer than anticipated, I still can't get fired because of this, but I will get only 70% of my last earned wages. But my company won't have to pay for all this (or they'll probably pay and get it all back from the government). Maternity leave here has exactly the same rules. It only has some more restrictions (like you must be pregnant before you can get maternity leave
) No company will go broke because they have a few sick people or a few people on maternity leave.