At this stage it seems likely that the bill may have the support of a majority of politicians, with support from Peter Dunne and the Māori Party as well as all the opposition MPs.

The government is allowed to veto a bill if is deemed to have more than a minor impact on government finances. It is required to do so at the third reading stage. So the bill, which belongs to the Labour Party’s Sue Moroney, will be debated in the house three times and go before a select committee for public submissions, at which point the government may use its power of veto.

Paid parental leave is a particularly important employment right for TEU’s new union members, many of whom are young and female.

CTU Women’s Council Co-convenor Suzanne McNabb said the current 14 weeks of paid parental leave is too short.  “People are returning back to work early because of economic pressures and extending paid parental leave would certainly remove some of these pressures and allow parents time with their new-born baby in those crucial first months.”

“New Zealand is currently lagging behind the OECD in paid parental leave entitlements – increasing it from 14 weeks to 26 would bring us into line with other OECD countries. The length of leave needs to be extended to at least to six months, which is the international recommendation on exclusive breast feeding.”

CTU Women’s Council Co-convenor Suzanne McNabb welcomes the Members Bill to extend paid parental leave to six months and congratulates Labour’s Sue Moroney on having it pulled from the Ballot today.
Suzanne McNabb says “Paid Parental Leave has clearly not been a priority for this government to date, but is an issue of great importance for New Zealand women and unions. It is good news today that this Bill has been selected – we look forward to the opportunity to campaign behind the issue and to paid parental leave being back on the political agenda.”

“We know from a number of evaluations that 14 weeks PPL is too short.  People are returning back to work early because of economic pressures and extending PPL would certainly remove some of these pressures and allow parents time with their newborn baby in those crucial first months. There are strong and proven health and employment reasons for having a longer paid parental leave. The goal of PPL is to support both maternal and health of the baby, but current length of paid leave in New Zealand doesn’t do this adequately.”

“New Zealand currently lagging behind the OECD in PPL entitlement – increasing it from 14 weeks to 26 would bring us into line with other OECD countries. The length of leave needs to be extended to at least to six months, which is the international recommendation on exclusive breast feeding.”

“This Members Bill provides opportunity for movement on the length of paid parental leave, for which there is very strong support, and provides the Government with opportunity to make some long overdue changes,” said Suzanne McNabb.

ENDS

for further information contact:

Suzanne McNabb – CTU Women’s Council Co-convenor
021995013

Posted via email from TEU

 ”The UK has the most unequal parental leave arrangements in Europe so extending the previous government’s shared leave plans is welcome.

 ”New parents should be able to decide for themselves who looks after their baby in the first year, rather than having the decision dictated by government regulation, as is currently the case. It’s important however to ensure that new mothers are encouraged to take sufficient time off to recover and breastfeed their babies.

 ”Businesses across Europe have had shared parental leave arrangements for years. There is no reason why UK business can’t do the same.”

Outside, baby carriages are lined up in rows like cars in a pint-sized parking lot. Inside, it’s controlled pandemonium as toddlers careen between scattered dolls, squishy cushions, a furry dragon on wooden wheels and dads.

Lots of dads.These are not just weekend fathers. It’s a sunny Monday morning in the tidy Stockholm neighbourhood of Hammarby Sjöstad, and nearly everyone in the Solbackens preschool more than 18 months old is a father on extended parental leave.

When it comes to coping with the competing demands of work and family, Canadians already look to Sweden with envy. In recent years, the government has brought in a more flexible workday, made it easier for employees to take sabbaticals to pursue outside interests and launched a campaign to cut absenteeism in half by making the workplace far healthier.

But one measure rises above the others: a cutting-edge approach to paternity leave that is revolutionizing Sweden’s drive to balance the professional and personal lives of its working couples.

Both parents here are given generous time off to care for young children, but men receive a bonus for trading the office for diaper duty – cash, if they take an equal share of the leave, plus two additional “daddy months” that only they can use.

Magnus Zimmerman, a first-time father sprawled on the preschool floor with son Line, 1, and a little orange truck, wouldn’t have it any other way. After Line was born, his mother stayed home for 12 months, two of which Mr. Zimmerman took off as well. She is now back on the job, but he doesn’t plan to return to Polystar, the small telecom supplier where he works, for another four months.His bosses didn’t blink an eye. “The senior managers are all at home with their children. It would be unusual if I wasn’t.”

“Message to the workplace”

For couples trying to juggle careers and children, the father’s role is vital. Last month, the European Union extended mandatory paternity leave for all its members to two weeks, which is how long David Cameron was off the job in September when he became Britain’s first prime minister to stay home with a newborn.

Mr. Cameron’s decision raised eyebrows, but “if men don’t see themselves as equal or symmetrical or shared parties in that enterprise, it’s very exhausting for women,” says Andrea Doucet, who teaches  sociology at Carleton University in Ottawa and has studied different models of parental leave.

As well as affecting the dynamics within a family, she explains, “the more that men can be involved … also sends a message to the workplace.”

Back in the late 1960s, Sweden did not allow immigration and introduced paid parental leave with guaranteed job protection to increase its work force. As a result, between 1970 and 1995, the number of women employed outside the home rose by one-third to 80 per cent.

But there was a problem. It had been assumed that, as women started to work, men would assume more responsibility at home. Yet fathers rarely took parental leave, leaving women to shoulder most of the child-care and household responsibilities as well as hold down a job.

So the powerful trade unions, women’s groups and successive governments looked for ways to tweak parental leave and change men’s behaviour and employers’ attitudes.The thinking was that if men helped when babies were born, they’d keep it up afterward, says Ulrika Hagström, a social-benefits expert with the Swedish Confederation of Professional Employees. And if employers realized men were just as likely to take time off, “they would have to adapt.”

Again nothing happened. When couples were allowed to decide who stayed home, men almost always took a pass, often afraid that becoming Mr. Mom would endanger their careers. And that fear was real, Ms. Hagström says. “Some employers saw it as if they [men on leave] prioritized work less and the family more.”

The magic bullet.

So, in 1995, just as Sweden’s fertility rate (the number of babies a mother has) was plunging, one month of parental leave was set aside exclusively for the father. If he didn’t use it, the couple would lose it. Five years later, the male-only share was doubled (a move The Economist slammed as “forced fatherhood”), and today there is political pressure to raise it to three months.

That is now the average length of a paternal leave, which is less than one-quarter of what a man could take, but about 85 per cent of Swedish fathers spend at least some time home alone with their children.

Employer prejudice persists, however. “Some Swedish companies made it a priority to be friendly to parental leave,” says Christian Celsing, a 39-year-old purchasing manager among the fathers at  lbackens, “but at others you probably do lose a couple of steps on the career ladder.”

Even so, the participation rate continues to rise, and one father in five manages a 50-50 split with his partner, collecting an “equality” bonus of $2,050.

It helps that Swedes are entitled to 480 days of paid leave before a child’s eighth birthday. For much of that time, the state pays 80 per cent of the parent’s salary, up to $5,445 a month, which is topped up by many companies – including the government, which employs one worker in every three.

In sharp contrast, most Canadians are compensated for only 35 weeks, and payments max out at 55 per cent of annual salaries no higher than $43,200. Because women still tend to earn less, it frequently makes financial sense to have them stay home. Only 12 to 15 per cent of Canadian fathers take any time at all.

“If you leave the choice to the family,” says Carleton’s Prof. Doucet, “it’s going to be a gender choice – with long-term effects on family and home.”

One effect is stress. In a recent Nanos Research survey conducted for The Globe and Mail, men were just as likely to feel the pressure of child care. And if given the chance, they will stay home: In 2000, a year before Ottawa expanded employment-insurance benefits from 10 to 35 weeks, fathers used just 3 per cent of the time available. By last year, their portion had jumped to 33 per cent, and Statistics Canada says that, in 2007, men on average took 6.3 days off work for family reasons versus 1.8 days a decade earlier.

Yet Prof. Doucet has found that most men still take parental leave in spurts, immediately after a birth or tacked on to a summer vacation. Even those who stay home the longest often do so simply because they qualify for benefits and their partners do not.

Sweden allows much more flexibility. Leave time can be diced in just about any permutation imaginable – as days, half-days and even quarter-days. What can’t be finessed is the gender dictum: Fathers must use the two months or they’re lost.

As a result, “the working culture is changing,” says Fredrik Rydahl, an engineer at truck manufacturer Scania who took more than six months off with both of his daughters, now 4 and 7. “When we hire a young guy, we count it as a given that this guy is going to be home with small children at some point.” According to his wife Maria, also an engineer, “You change so much when you’re home and you’re a parent. If only one of you does this journey, you risk going in different directions.”

Question of balance

Fifteen years of tweaking parental leave has helped Swedes reverse their fading fertility rate and made them among the happiest of Europeans when it comes to work-life balance. According to one survey, only 18 per cent feel their jobs make it difficult to fulfill family obligations.

Having fathers become equal partners seems to enrich the lives of both parents – and the men in the Solbackens playroom say they are getting the balance right.”I personally haven’t had any fears of getting off track with my career,” says Olav Fromm, a product marketing manager at a pharmaceutical company currently on a six-month leave with his year-old daughter.

“I think we do not define ourselves through work in the way our parents’ generation did,” the father of four explains, adding, “At the same time, now you have more professional women with demanding careers … and the parental leave helps make that possible.” Being on leave has made him a better father and probably a better husband, Mr. Fromm says, but men out pushing strollers on a work day can still draw stares.

“I went with three other fathers to a museum,” he recalls. “There were 40 Japanese tourists, all men, and they were taking photos of us.”

By Susan Sachs

From Thursday’s Globe and Mail

The initiative arose out of the earlier Women Returning to the Workforce Project, a joint project of the university’s human resources and equity offices and the TEU.

A salary sacrifice arrangement is an arrangement between the university and a staff member whereby the staff member agrees to reduce his or her base salary in return for a university-based early childhood centre providing that staff member free childcare services equivalent in value to the amount of the reduction in the staff member’s pay.

Currently, employees who use the university’s early childhood education centres receive their annual salary from the university and PAYE tax is deducted from this amount. Then they pay their childcare fees directly to the early childhood centre from their net pay. Under a salary sacrifice arrangement the employee often will pay less tax and thus take home more pay.  For someone on a $50,000 salary, with early childhood education fees of $5,000, this arrangement could give them an annual saving in tax paid of approximately $1,358.

TEU organiser Jane Adams said the initiative is a simple, practical way that the university can support parents and their families who work at the university.

Other developments from this project include the introduction of volunteer parental leave advisors who advise and support those women and their families who need information or assistance around parental leave matters; breast-feeding spaces and that women who have taken parental leave are not disadvantaged; the development of a ‘Toolkit for combining Parenting and a Career‘; and regular meetings of women which address different topics specific to combining parenting and career.

Thanks to NZ Alex @ Flickr for the photo

on May Day

Media release on behalf of Working Women’s Charter Seminar committee

26 April 2010″ 

Women are meeting in Wellington on May Day to celebrate the 30^th birthday of the Working Women’s Charter, and to find out what remains to be achieved for working women.

‘ Working Women’s Charter was adopted in 1980 by the Federation of Labour – forerunner of the Council of Trade Unions,’ said Hazel Armstrong, one of the organisers of the May 1 seminar.  It was a 16-point Charter outlining the rights and needs of working women, and was a guide and inspiration for campaigns and activism at a time when women faced many challenges in paid employment.’

‘ 2010 is also a significant anniversary of another milestone. It is 50 years since the Government Services Equal Pay Act of 1960. But much remains to be done to achieve equal pay for work of equal value, one of the key points of the Working Women’s Charter,’ said Hazel Armstrong.

The seminar will be addressed by 12 women, including some who were union activists when the Charter was promoted in the late 1970s and 1980s. The seminar audience will also hear from young women whose life experiences may differ in many ways from those of older women. ‘We want to hear about younger women’s experiences with work, and what they see as priorities for the future’, said Ms Armstrong.

In addition to presentations the seminar will include displays, moving images, birthday celebrations and singing.

To register (Waged $20; unwaged $10) email: workingwomenseminar@gmail.com  or write to Working Women’s Seminar, PO Box 2564, Wellington

The New Zealand Working Women’s Charter

1. The right to work for everyone who wishes to do so.
2. The elimination of all discrimination on the basis of sex, race, marital or parental status, sexuality or age.
3. Equal pay for work of equal value – meaning the same total wage plus other benefits.
4. Equal opportunity of entry into occupations and of promotion regardless of sex, sexuality, marital or parental status, race or age.
5. Equal education opportunities for all.
6. (a) Union meetings to be held in working hours, and (b) Special trade union education courses for women unionists to be held with paid time off for participants.
7. Equal access to vocational guidance and training, including on the job training, study and conference leave.
8. Introduction of a shorter working week with no loss of pay, flexible working hours, part-time opportunities for all workers.
9. Improved working conditions for women and men. The retention of beneficial provisions which apply to women. Other benefits to apply equally to men and women.
10. Removal of legal, bureaucratic and other impediments to equality in superannuation, social security benefits, credit, finance, taxation, tenancies, and other related matters.
11. Special attention to the needs and requirements of women from ethnic communities as they see them.
12. Wide availability of quality child care with Government and/or community support for all those who need it, on a 24-hour basis, including after school and school holiday care.
13. Introduction of adequate paid parental leave (maternity and paternity leave) without loss of job security, superannuation or promotion prospects.
14. Availability of paid family leave to enable time off to be taken in family emergencies, e.g. when children or elderly relatives are ill.
15. Sex education and birth control advice freely available to all people. Legal, financial, social and medical impediments to safe abortion, contraception and sterilisation to be removed.
16. Comprehensive government funded research into health questions specific to women.

The Australian government will from next year pay new parents the minimum wage of $544 a week for 18 weeks, while the opposition is pledging even more – paid leave for six months at full salary, capped at $A150,000 funded from a new tax on companies. New Zealand currently pays parents 14 weeks at $429.74 a week, below the minimum wage of $510 a week.

Labour Minister Kate Wilkinson said the government could not afford to expand the number of weeks covered or to increase payments. ”The government is borrowing heavily to maintain current levels of public services and simply isn’t in a position to consider extending paid parental leave.” But Labour’s spokeswoman for women’s affairs, Sue Moroney, says New Zealand risks slipping further behind Australia and other countries in economic and social competitiveness if the government does not extend the paid parental leave scheme.

And the Families Commission and the Parenting Council argue that the government’s emphasis should be shifted from childcare subsidies to paid parental leave because the economic, educational, health and general social benefits in the long run far outweigh the short-term impact on the budget. Lesley Max, the chair of the Parenting Council, said economics was not the only way to gain a competitive advantage over other countries. ”I don’t think this is a party political matter. If we want to build a strong and well educated society and are concerned for our prosperity, the single most important thing we can do is to foster attachment between mother and baby, parent and baby. ”That is the foundation of our society. ”I’m aware that the time isn’t right in New Zealand to be proposing costly new policies, but paid parental leave should not go off the agenda for two reasons. ”The overwhelming one is the wellbeing of the baby and the other is our competitiveness with Australia and other countries.”

Moroney has introduced a private member’s bill to parliament that proposes extending paid parental leave to 26 weeks by 2013. ”We need to do it because all the evidence and research tells us babies that are well supported in the first six months thrive thereafter. ”Having unstressed, well-supported families around them in the first six months of their lives means that they get a great start. ”It is important that we stay competitive. ”Most of Europe now has six months [paid parental leave], so, it’s not just between Australia and us, it’s the rest of the world leaving us behind. ”It’s just another factor that people will consider, particularly people in that demographic that we need to retain in this country; and that is people in their 20s and 30s, who will be thinking about the impact of paid parental leave and the cost of raising a family.”

The Families Commission is pushing for 13 months’ paid leave – 12 months for the mother and one month for the father – by 2015. Commissioner Gregory Fortuin said: ”If you want to run economic arguments then you can look at the cost of what will happen if you don’t do these things. ”We need to put in place a long-term strategy to build better families, which ultimately will build better communities and better societies. ”There’s a strong business case. If I’m an employer, I will get far better value if one of my employees has a stable family where they are there for their children, which then means that they are happier and more productive and need to take less time off.”

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Thanks to Nick in exsilio @ Flickr for the photo

Otago University has increased its paid parental leave provision from 6 weeks to 12 weeks for all mothers or primary caregivers of children born or adopted after 27 April this year. It is also providing 2 weeks parental leave for staff who are partners of the child’s primary caregiver.

The University’s human resources department says that the new policy is based on the principle of manaakitanga, and aims to normalise a positive approach to child birth and parenting. It reflects an acceptance that parents are an integral part of our society and working environment: a whānau approach. It also aims to support all staff in achieving a satisfying and productive life/work balance.

Parental leave of up to 52 weeks may be granted, including any paid period agreed to by the University. The maximum period of parental leave may be taken by either the mother/primary caregiver exclusively, or shared between the mother/primary caregiver and their partner.

The two week paid leave entitlement for partners employed by the University is in addition to the 52 week total entitlement, but no individual may take more than 52 weeks in total. Access to the University’s parental leave provisions does not affect the individual’s entitlements under the government’s paid parental leave provisions.

Thanks to webchicken @ Flickr for the photo

Parental leave is working well for women and children, but also for the retention of workers in the workforce.” That’s the view of TEU women’s vice president, Sandra Grey, upon reading a released recently study that suggests most mothers who take up paid parental leave return to the workforce within a year.

The Work Patterns after Paid Parental Leave study was produced by Statistics NZ, and funded by the Department of Labour. Since 2004 working mothers have been entitled to 14 weeks paid parental leave, and up to 52 weeks of employment-protected parental leave (transferable to fathers).

The legislation aimed to encourage greater female workforce attachment, and gender equity in the labour market and within families, It also sought to support families by providing income replacement, ensuring the health and wellbeing of new mothers and families, and improving New Zealand’s compliance with international human rights policies that provide for paid maternity leave.

The study found that three-quarters of recipients returned to work within 12 months of starting parental leave, and two-thirds of those returned to work after taking six months leave or less. Most people who returned to worked within 12 months of starting leave returned to the same employer, while one-fifth started a new employment relationship.

Many people reduced their earnings after returning to work, with around one-third earning considerably less than before. Those who did not return to the same employer, but started a new job, were much more likely to have reduced earnings.

Dr Grey says it is important we know why women are returning to less pay – whether it is related to returning to part time work, changing to more flexible jobs, or moving to places that better support their childcare needs, or factors like transport.

“New Zealand still has to figure out how to help workers with childcare and other return-to-work costs that are really impacting on low paid women who this study shows are less likely to return to work,” concludes Dr Grey.