Under the plans Parents will be given the right
- to work part time ,
- to choose their own hours,
- to statutory sick in the event of child illness,
Lets ignore the impact on business, lets look at how it could affect you on an individual level.
Imagine you are working in a shop, factory or office and you don't have young children? Ah yes folks you are stuffed, your colleagues have to go and pick little Robert and Amanda from school? So YOU are working late, it's the law. You get last choice on working hours.You want to be off over Christmas? Ah well your colleagues have kiddies so YOU have to cover. None of this I worked last Christmas so I get this off lark.....
If one of my colleagues wants to have a child then fine, but I don't see why that should impact me. I accept we have to be reasonable, I accept there maybe a need for family friendly policies, but having children is a duty and responsibility that people choose.
Another thing in the proposal is that companies must prove they are paying Men and Women the same for doing the same job. Now firstly let me state I see nothing wrong with this but, oh come on you new there was one, you have to allow for different levels of experience and you have to be treated the same.
What do I mean? Well if a man and a woman do the same job they should be expected to do the same activities. Telling the man he is expected to do overnight support but, that it is unreasonable to expect the woman to do so because it may not be safe is not equality.
Equality is a noble and worthy aim and one we should all want but you can't have your cake and eat it.
5 comments:
To be honest, I think all workers should have the right to flexible hours and leave in times of necessity. I know those things would mainly affect parents, but there are others who would benefit from having the same rights, carers for example.
Looking at it from a wider perspective, I have a feeling they are aiming these measures at parents because of the drop in the birth rate - at the moment working while bringing up a family is bloody difficult (women still do the majority of the housework and cooking so in effect have two full time jobs and most women who work do so through necessity not choice) One of the main reasons for women choosing to remain childless is the worry that the demands of a family will negatively impact on their career. Introducing family friendly employment laws may make some change their minds and produce a future tax payer or two.
Having said that, I managed to produce five little tax payers while working (not literally) without any special treatment.
I think that if a man is asked to work at night, he is doing a different job to a woman who doesn't and therefore should be paid at a different rate. The problem arises when a man and a woman are doing the same job, have similar levels of experience and qualifications but the former is being paid more. I know of this happening - an old boss of mine left her job because she discovered a male colleague was earning £5000 a year more.
necessity is different. if someone want to come in an hour earlier or hour later for taking children to or from child minders, school, medical appointments..... that is meaning you can choose your hours on a regular basos.
there is NO excuse for paying someone less because they are a woman.
I suppose the problem is if you to reward good work, attitude etc.
Oh yes, I agree about the mundane everyday stuff. If people want to work, they need to arrange childcare, and most childminders, nurserys etc are open well before most jobs start.
I suppose it's a bit rich for me to say that because in my last job my boss did let me take part of the afternoon off to pick the boys up, get their tea and so on, I then went back and made the hours up in the evening. But that was an arrangement we came to personally - in fact he offered because my childminder moved and I would otherwise have needed to find another job. Plus, the nature of the job was such that it didn't really matter if I did parts of my work in the evening or the afternoon. If I had been working as part of a team I can see how it could have caused problems for others.
This new "law" might look like equality (if you are an utter idiot) but aside from pandering to a few whims of the feminist extreme left (a nasty scary group) it does the exact opposite. You see I own my company and we are not exactly a large firm.
I need 100% from everyone I take on or it's going to start costing me personally (I earn based on the company making a profit or I don't earn).
Now I have three applicants for a job. Let's say I need them to co-ordinate customer product support and development of the self same product. I need this person to be able to cover a set number of hours say 11 to 6. If this worker suddenly get's the rights to work whatever hours they want they are utterly useless to me. I now have to do thier job and mine while they get to do what?
I can sack this worker but I can't find anything for them to do.
I can't risk that situation. So my top three potential workers are women. Hmm well we just keep on advertising and interviewing untill we find a man in the number one slot for qualifications.
Then we hire him and when the feminists kick up a fuss we show we have the most qualified person and claim it's just how the dice landed.
"What my entire work foce is male? Shocking the women in this area need a better enducation." claims I.
After all it would bankrupt the cumpany to emply even one female. Fortunatly we are so small we can create meaninless board memberships and populate it with women. They don't get paid but then they don't do anything other then pick up a complimentry bottle of wine each christmas. Statistics equall.
When we get bigger we find a new plan.
Ok so that's a little exteme but thats the truth. This law will make it too expensive to employ females especially with the one years maternity leave Blair has in this plan.
I'm just greatfull my local MP seems against this idea.
"the feminist extreme left (a nasty scary group)"
LOL they scare me, and I'm female. Plus, it is extremely arrogant of them to assume that they speak for all women - all women don't think the same or want the same things, so how can a self appointed group speak for all women.
The new laws are aimed at parents, so that's men as well as women. I can see what you mean about the problems it could cause though, most businesses have a set working day and to have people wanting to work outside those hours is impractical. Mr Blogs and I are self-employed, and it's just the two of us, but if we took someone else on, it wouldn't be feasible for them to come in in the morning for example, because most of our business is during the evenings and at weekends.
I remember in the 80s when it was common for women to be asked about any plans to have children at job interviews, that was made illegal, but I can see the same situation arising again. This time though it will effect both men and women. Lets face it, a lot of employers are going to think twice about taking on someone with a family, or who might be likely to have one.
I do think there should be equality in the workplace, but at the same, such measures must be practical. There is no point making whole sections of the population less employable, or in creating divisions.
As I mentioned before, I'm sure this is all about trying to make it easier for people to have families because of the declining birth rate, but it isn't going to work. Better childcare would be more useful - I know Labour brag about providing x number of nursery places but they aren't much use to the parents of a six month old baby. Good child minders are still few and far between, the money they are spending on this scheme would be better spent on recruiting more of them.
Oh and if they want to encourage women to have children, it might be an idea if they didn't have such strict criteria about who is and isn't a suitable parent and they dropped thir plans for the database which will monitor all children and alert 'the professionals' if any seem to failing. In their view failing could include such things as not eating anough fruit, or dropping a grade in a GCSE subject.
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