I ran into an article about women who took advantages of the maternity benefits. The author expresses his concerns that women might be hurting small businesses by taking maternity leaves and then don't come back to work. He argues that the policy should be changed to protect the employers as well. To do so, the company should give more money to women who come back to work instead of those who quit after their pregnancy.
The writer made 4 points about this issues. First, maternity benefits are expensive for the companies that hire the employees. Second, these companies get "burned" when women take and run away with maternity benefits without returning back to work. Third, the more beneficial maternity leaves become, the more the companies get buried with expenses. Fourth, some firms don't believe it makes sense to even give maternity benefits to their employees if the women ultimately do not decide to continue working for their companies. The author further suggests that maternity bonuses should be given AFTER the women come back to work.
Now, I don't really know much about maternity leaves and benefits because I've never been employed nor pregnant before. However, I just thought that it isn't fair for the firms to take away the compensation package for those women who get pregnant while they're working. Many mothers ultimately choose to be with their child instead of working or find another job that will help them find suitable schedule to be with their newborn babies.
At the same time, I understand that many women really are taking advantage of the maternity leaves. But can you really blame them? If the firms decide to give their employees the maternity benefits after they come back to work, would that really make things better? Maybe they are trying to pay 50% of the bonuses while the women are pregnant and another 50% after they come back to work. Then what will happen to these women during their time of pregnancy and in need of the money?
The article is here:
http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/economist/47184?count=30&start=6...
And yes, this piece of article is written by a man. Even now and then he'll insert in what "his wife" says. I'm not sure if him being a man has anything to do with the content itself. Although I'd like to disagree with him, I can't really ignore what he brought onto the plate.
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Maternity leave is designed to help keep the family stable money-wise while the mother can't work. Not giving them most, or all, of their pay until they go back to work kind of defeats the purpose, especially if the mother is having complications.
Yes, being male and writing that does have some to do with the content. The content specifically deals with pregnant women. While I'm not arguing that men don't know anything about being pregnant, they don't, however, experience it first hand. I'm sorry, but after six months of paying homage to the porcelain gods, then three months of back pain, and bloating and general fatigue/lack of energy getting mixed in there throughout, I don't want to have to worry about whether or not I can pay the hospital bills while I'm still on leave.
-- quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
I agree that companies should offer maturnity benefits packages after mothers return to work from being on maturnity leave because my spanish teacher in high school did the same thing- she taught spanish at my high school till she had her baby and then, she quit.
Couldn't businesses come up with some sort of contract indicating that the employee would be responsible for repaying a portion of the benefits if they do not return?
I once heard that only in America a rotten apple can spoil it for the whole bunch and THAT is what is unfair. Taking away maternity leave from all because a small few have taken advantage of it really does not make sense to me. The article does not state the percentage of women who quit after their maternity leave is over, but I'm guessing, with today's economy, the number can't be too high.