Printable View
Hello everyone,
I’m the owner of a small company and I was wondering if anyone knows anything about the maternity leave laws - what are my legal obligations for pregnant workers taking leave? She’s only been here for 3 months if that makes a big difference…
Thanks a lot.
leadchatter
Have you checked with the laws of your state that you are in? And what does your Employee handbook say about the leave?
I believe the FMLA covers employees of larger companies up to twelve weeks of unpaid leave. State Labor Offices would help you some. For example, I am in Colorado, so I went to the Colorado Workforce website and searched for maternity leave.
Depending on which state you are located, you will have to look up the employment laws for your state. In California, there are no requirements for the number of months or hours worked before a female employee is eligible for maternity leave. But this is not the case everywhere so you need to research the laws for your particular state.
I'm in UK actually:/
In Washington state, maternity leave laws apply to businesses only once they've reached a certain size. (The basic rule is that someone can take unpaid leave but they get their job back later when they're ready to come back.) I.e., the law says you don't have to worry about maternity leave until, as I recall, you have more than 25 employees.
This makes sense, of course. How does a truly small business deal with its only employee taking maternity leave?
Unfortunately, the state agency that enforces the law says (on their web site) that since there's a clear public policy to protect pregnant women, they take the position that even businesses below the threshold size need to apply.
I think there's maybe two interesting take-aways from this even for people not in Washington state... (which is most everybody of course)...
1. One needs to consider not only the letter of the law, but how it's enforced.
2. Geez, does anybody really think these laws help women of child-bearing age work in small business in high-paid positions? How can they?
There was one country - Holland or Sweden maybe - where mothers were given a few months off actually. The UK probably has some laws as well - but unfortunately I am not familiar with them.
Have you asked counsel to see what is suggested?
Hi leadchatter,
As of the 1st of April the rules of UK maternity law have changed, all female employees are entitled to a total of 52 week’s maternity leave no matter how long they’ve been working for you. Those 52 weeks are divided in half with OML – Ordinary Maternity Leave and AML – Additional Maternity Leave. I was dealing with a similar situation and found this website very useful: http://www.simply-docs.co.uk/Documen...ocumentID=1255. You can download documents related to the new maternity leave laws from there.
Hope that helps.
Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP) seems to be a bit better. The other link is just documents that you have to pay for - but I think this link is on the official website.