Parental Leave - No More Double Dipping on Parental Leave

Topical issue: No more double dipping on parental leave

Suppose that you are a small business owner, are you willing to pay the salary to a worker

 who will be off-duty for the following four months and wait for him to come back? Or you

 would rather find another person to take place of that position? I reckon smart people

would choose the latter. However, the issue now is that pregnant women are taking this

advantage from their employers, which is called the paid parental leave policy. In Australia,

 parental leave pay is currently at the national minimum wage, $695.00 per week before tax

for a maximum of 18 weeks by a pregnant woman’s direct employer.

My contention is that the cost of replacing pregnant women from work need to be shared

by society as a whole instead of just by women nor employers. And government should take

the responsibility of that.

Firstly, from company’s perspective, paid maternity leave creates extra burden to woman’s

employer. Business should not have to pay for an employee who leaves the job position and

also pay for a replacement as well. The New South Wales State Chamber of Commerce

states that it is unequivocal that business, particularly small business cannot afford to fund a

mandatory paid maternity leave scheme”. Similarly, the National Farmers’ Federation

considered that: the impact of forced employer responsibility for paid maternity leave will

result in an increase in costs that may well be unaffordable particularly if the employer is

not benefiting from paid maternity leave. The additional cost of paid maternity leave would

force some small businesses to close. As a result, the government may have to provide new

start allowance to those business and hence worsen the budget. In addition, if employers are

forced to pay for maternal leave without any profit return, they will most likely pass this

onto consumers in the form of higher price. Therefore, it is us, the citizens paying for the

cost.

Based on the potential profit loss, businesses are reluctant to pay. In this manner, many

employees are dismissed by being pregnant. This leads to my second point, employer