Paid Maternity Leave

Question: Australia has to date not legislated for paid maternity leave, unlike most other countries. Assess who should take responsibility for paid maternity leave. Explain the reasons for your response.

Paid maternity leave is defined as income replacement to compensate for the leave from paid employment necessary around child-birth (Baird, 2002a:2). In the developed world today, many western countries have designed a legislated for paid maternity leave such as Sweden, Germany, United Kingdom, New Zealand and more. Indeed only USA and Australia have to date not legislated for paid maternity leave across the workforce (O’Neill, 2004: E-Brief). This consequently placed the responsibility on three different groups in Australia including employers who value as the most significant role follow by the government and finally their family, which three groups should have the purpose of giving financial support and psycho-social health to pregnant women and their new infants.

Employers should be more crucial in taking the responsibility for paid maternity leave compare to any others. There is evidence that maternity pay is good for business (NWJC, 1999:11.9). On the other the hand, government should become another role in taking the responsibility for paid maternity leave. Indeed, Australia was amongst the first in the world to provide a maternity allowance which is a payable on the birth of a child. This could be a support to pregnant women, but the government should take further more responsibility for paid maternity leave for specific reasons. In addition, family members should play part of the responsibility for paid maternity leave, especially the husband. The Royal Women’s Hospital has conducted a research base on the source of income while women pregnant, indicating that husbands become the role of taking responsibility for paid maternity leave in a range of situations (Wendy, 2004).

Amongst three different groups, employers should weight the most for paid maternity leave, not only because to provide economic support to their employees but more crucially for a higher return in their �investment’ as well as to retain high quality women staff. This will be discussed after analysing the current situation women have in Australia.

Australia currently provides a reasonably comprehensive system of unpaid maternity leave with a 52 weeks of unpaid maternity leave to women who have worked with their employer for at least 12 continuous months in either a full time or part time basis (HREOC, 2002:3.2.1). This ensure the right of women to return to position they held prior to taking leave, however as women in Australia tend to have a large number employed in causal basis, it results in majority of women in disqualified for the scheme. Figure shows that almost one in four of those aged 25-34 had changed employer within the previous 12 months in 2000 (HREOC, 2002:2.4.4).

Unpaid maternity leave have the advantage of guaranteeing a position for pregnant women but with no financial assistance as women do not receive income during the maternity leave period. This fact cause a paid maternity leave more preferable with normally 12 weeks leave accompany with income, however one estimated is that only 20% of working women are entitled to paid maternity leave (NWJC, 1999: 5). The reason of it is perhaps due to an amendment in the employment conditions since the last decade. Women can not be guarantee for paid maternity because each employee received different contract due enterprise agreements (union and non-union) and individual workplace agreements (Baird, 2002:6). Figure shows that there were only 1% to 2% of women who worked in retail and hospitality industries have received paid maternity leave, and high educated women such as those in finance and insurance industries is more likely to received it, with a record of 77% having access to it (O’Neill, 2004: E-Brief).

From the investigation of the position women faced in the workforce, it is found that it remains a high percentage of 64.5% women who received neither paid nor unpaid maternity leave (Wendy, 2004:26). This suggests the need for a role in taking responsibility for paid maternity leave to majority of women among the society and hence employers should weight more heavily in taking the role. Women are significantly affecting the operation of the labour market as women’s workforce participation rates increase to 64% in 2002 (ABS, 2003). This reflected a high proportion of women that have access to tertiary education. Hence, employers should seen women as a potential role and make more use of the skills of women (Ross, 1992). Green (1996) has made a value statement that women are seen to bring additional value to organisations by virtue of their distinctive set of skills. As a result this is suggesting employers to widening the potential number or type of employees available to a company (Green, 1996).

To achieve this goal, employers should place the ante on paid maternity leave for a long term gain and the long term survival for the company. Providing paid maternity leave is not only beneficial to women but employers also gain through a range of specific ways, in terms of retention rates, return on investment in staff, improved loyalty and morale (NWJC, 1999:11.9). Furthermore, employers should take responsibility for paid maternity leave to reduce turnover and improves the employers standing in the labour market (Dickens, 1999).

In addition to achieve for the aim to reinforce the message to employers, government could have imposes legislated for paid maternity leave in order to enforce the role of employers in taking responsibility over paid maternity leave. Majority of women who could not access to paid maternity leave is because paid maternity leave is not formalised