Although the U.S. Family and Medical Leave Act grants some long-awaited rights, a policy directive recently ratified by European Community countries offers superior benefits in one area covered by the new U.S. law: The European directive mandates more time off and pay to working women who give birth.
President Clinton signed the family leave act into law Feb. 5 requiring employers with 50 or more workers to provide 12 weeks’ unpaid leave after birth or adoption or to care for an ailing family member or to recover from a serious illness or impairment. It’s too soon to tell whether U.S. firms can use the law to reduce paid maternity benefits.
But a directive adopted Oct. 19, 1992 for all 12 member states of the European Community calls for a minimum of 14 weeks’ maternity leave for women with compensation at least equal to sick pay. In Britain, that’s equal to $65 to $75 a week, depending on income. The reference to sick pay, however, is not meant to imply that pregnancy is an illness. The directive leaves open the question of who pays for these benefits, and EC countries will decide funding issues later through legislation.
Britain is the first country to take steps to put the directive into effect. Recently, the House of Commons adopted a complex employment bill that includes the maternity leave elements of the European decision, but leaves the pay questions for subsequent legislation. The employment bill was expected to go before the House of Lords this week.
The European Community measure also grants women protection from being fired because of pregnancy, grants them the right to pre-natal medical checkups during working hours and the right to refuse night work or specific duties if either is potentially hazardous to their health during pregnancy.
EC countries have until Oct. 1994 to implement the provisions and may not use the legislation as an excuse to offer women less than what already is available.
It is not yet clear how most American employers will implement the Family and Medical Leave Act.
The U.S. law takes effect Aug. 5, but companies with existing collective bargaining contracts have until Feb. 5, 1994, to put mandated leave policies into effect.
Some U.S. business organizations opposed family leave as far back as 1986 on the grounds that the government should not interfere in employee benefits, an issue traditionally negotiated by management and labor. Over the years, business leaders warned that if the government required one type of benefit to be offered to workers, employers may be forced cut back on other types of paid benefits such as health care, vacations or paid maternity leave.
So far, no major U.S. firms or business groups have announced plans to reduce existing benefit packages or to renegotiate future ones as a result of the new U.S. law. One reason may be that businesses have no way of knowing how many employees will take advantage of the leave or how much it may cost.
However, Carlos Bonilla, an economist for the Employment Policies Institute, a non-profit research organization in Washington, D.C., that represents the hotel and restaurant industry, says “one way or the other, we all pay for our benefits.”
For employees at the high end of the salary spectrum, Bonilla says it ultimately may mean fewer benefits or slower salary growth to pay for mandated family leave. “At the lower end, it may manifest itself in fewer jobs,” he says.
Diane Generous, an employee relations expert with the National Association of Manufacturers, says most companies still are trying to figure out exactly what is in the new law since the language is broad and the Labor Department has yet to issue regulations to implement it.
“Some (association) members are saying `We are going to look at our whole benefit structure’,” says Generous. “But I think the majority would say, `We lost. We just have to deal with it.”‘
Not all business groups fear the worst.
“You won’t see the drastic change in existing benefit plans as some business groups would lead you to believe,” says Steven J. Pfister, vice president of political affairs for the National Retail Federation.
“Many groups continue to maintain that the law is onerous to business, will lead to job losses, dampen the economic recovery and discriminate against the hiring of women of child-bearing age,” Pfister says. “Quite frankly, we don’t buy those arguments.”
The federation, which initially opposed the legislation, became one of the few American business groups to endorse the family leave bill shortly before its passage.
“We developed a comfort zone with the bill as it evolved,” says Pfister, pointing to the exemption for firms with fewer than 50 employees, that employees must work at least one year to qualify for leave, and that employers can require workers who decide to take advantage of the leave to first exhaust their existing vacation and sick days.
Orlagh O’Farrell, a lawyer with the equal opportunities unit of the EC Commission in Brussels, says the European plan should be a model for the United States, a signal to policymakers and employers that women are a permanent part of the work force and pregnancy is a natural event that must be accommodated.
“The U.S. situation seems to assume that pregnancy is sort of a private hobby, which must be borne at your own expense,” O’Farrell says.
The European directive is expected to most benefit women in Britain, where 150,000 who have been ineligible now will qualify for government-mandated paid maternity leave, according to the Equal Opportunities Commission in London. Before, women were eligible for six weeks’ maternity leave at 90 percent of their salary, 12 more weeks at a rate of about $66 up to a total of 40 weeks, unpaid-but only if they had worked for the same employer full-time for two years or part-time for five years. The leave is paid by the employer, but the employer is reimbursed by the government.
Christine Gowdridge, director of Maternity Alliance, a non-profit group in London working to improve maternity rights, says the European directive, although flawed, offers greater benefits than mandated by the U.S. family leave law.
“Unpaid leave is useless because part of the stress around having a baby is your (loss of) income,” she says. “Women cannot afford unpaid leave.”
To exclude companies with fewer than 50 employees, as the U.S. law does, would not benefit women in Britain because most work for small companies, she says.
The European mandate, however, does not address time off to take care of adopted children or to assist sick family members. In Britain, some companies voluntarily provide time off for employees to care for relatives who are ill or for adopted children, but it is not required.
Some women’s rights groups say, however, that the European law still is not enough for women having children, calling it a watered-down version of the original EC proposal calling for 14 weeks’ maternity leave at full salary.
Women bearing children in other EC countries, according to EC figures, receive an average of 14.5 weeks leave with full pay. Greece and the Netherlands provide women with 16 weeks leave at full pay, Germany 14 weeks at full pay, Italy 20 weeks at 80 percent of salary, and France 16 weeks at 84 percent of salary.
Some companies offer paid or unpaid leave for men. Germany, for example, allows men and women as much as three years of “parental” leave, the first two years of which is paid leave-up to $370 per month for the first six months and a lower rate for up to 18 months.
Christine Crawley, representing Birmingham, England, in the European Parliament-a governing body of the European Community-and chairwoman of the women’s rights committee of the European Parliament, says the directive is an improvement for thousands of British women who were not eligible for maternity leave under the old rules. But women in Denmark will gain little, she says, because the government already mandates 28 weeks’ leave at 90 percent of salary and cannot reduce this to mirror the EC minimums.
However, countries such as Denmark and the Netherlands will have to comply with EC-mandated regulations on health and safety at work, O’Farrell says.
On the eve of the parliamentary vote in Britain earlier this month, employers’ organizations complained that the law would create extra costs for companies and may hurt women’s job prospects in a time of recession. Jill Andrew, director of the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry, says the maternity rules will be burdensome to employers during a recession and may make women of child-bearing age less attractive as job candidates. She also is critical of the provision granting leave without a required time of employment.
“It’s not the actual direct costs of maternity leave that’s worrying employers,” she says. “It’s the disruption to the business. That’s the key issue.”
