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BY 15 DECEMBER 1999 the provisions of the EU directive on parental leave must be law in the United Kingdom. The directive started life in 1996 as an agreement between the European employers' organisations UNICE and CEEP, and the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC). As reported in our last issue the Maastricht social chapter enabled agreements between these bodies to become a directive of the European Commission. However as the then U.K. government were granted an exemption to this part of Maastricht, no progress was made on this subject in British law. When the new government signed up to the social chapter the EU gave it until last month to implement directive 96/34. Unlike many other countries the United Kingdom has not previously legislated for any parental leave apart from maternity. Therefore in its proposals the government has stuck fairly closely to the minimum which the EU lays down. Essentially the regulations allow parents and those having responsibility for a child under the Children Act to take 13 weeks parental leave for each child. This leave does not have to be paid.
Some of the details are as follows:
1) applies only to children born or adopted after 15 December
1999
2) applies only to employees who have been with their employer for 1
year or more
3) applies until the child is 5 or until 5 years after adoption
4) leave must be taken in 1-week blocks up to a maximum of 4 in a
year giving 21 days notice
5) the employer can postpone the leave for up to 6 months except
directly after birth or adoption.
There is a separate provision for parents of disabled children,
defined as those receiving disability living allowance. They will be
able to use their leave until the child's eighteenth birthday and to
take it a day at a time if they prefer.
Other items in the regulations will allow employees to to go to an employment tribunal if they are prevented from taking parental leave, bind the employer to continue the employment contract including its provisions for termination, redundancy payments and disciplinary and grievance procedures, and guarantee the right to return to the same job. These minimum provisions do not preclude employers and employees or their representatives making their own agreements on parental leave but they cannot offer less. To see how many people will take up parental leave it is useful to look at the experience of other countries. In Sweden, where leave can be taken until a child is 8, there are relatively generous state payments and 4 weeks are reserved for fathers only, 98% of mothers and 50% of fathers do so. In Germany, Finland and Denmark take-up by fathers varies between 1.5% and 6% but over 90% of mothers in these countries plus France take some parental leave. In the U.K. the T.U.C. conducted a survey in March which showed that only 15% of parents would take up their full entitlement if no payment was made.
There has been criticism from both individual unions and the
T.U.C. that these measures do not go far enough and that they may be
open to challenge in the European courts for not fully implementing
the directive. T.U.C. general secretary John Monks said he 'was very
disappointed that only parents of children born after December 15
will gain these rights'. Other disappointing aspects of the
legislation centre around the maximum age limit of five which
precludes parents taking time off for school half-terms and the one
year service requirement which the T.U.C. says will have an adverse
impact on lone parents, 'lone parents will be less likely to enter
employment if they know that they have to wait a year before having
the right to take parental leave'. A similar scheme by the Irish
government was deemed unlawful after a challenge by the Irish
Congress of Trades Unions and the Manufacturing, Science and Finance
union (MSF) is considering lodging a complaint with the
Commission.
Finally, the right to take time off for family reasons in the case of
sickness or accident was dealt with in the Employment Relations Act
which came into force earlier in 1999.
The Provisions (minimum)
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The Regulations are available from The Stationery Office, on |
0870-600-5522, price £3 |
AUSTRIAN ELECTRICITY workers have concluded a deal with E-Wirtschaft, the privatised electricity generator. Whilst industry minima, company rates and bonuses may all rise by between 1.5% and 2.3%, what is interesting about the deal is that lesser rises may be payed if 1% of the firm's wage bill is put into 'measures to increase job security'. These would include reducing the working week, starting an endowment fund for training and safeguarding pay levels when a worker changes jobs.
CLOSER TO HOME in Ireland the problems of negotiating a new national framework agreement on pay to replace Partnership 2000 have recently come to light. The Finance Ministry released figures which suggested that public sector pay had increased by 50% in 5 years and will go up by 9% during 2000. Unions disputed this statistic as they said that only 3.5% will be in pay packets.
AN UNUSUAL deal in Italy allows immigrant workers to take extended leave to visit their families. At Zanussi about 350 of the 12,000 work force come from outside the EU, mainly from Africa and Eastern Europe. The agreement will give them up to 50 days every 3 years, to be saved from holiday and leave entitlement.
These facts come from 'IDS Employment Europe' December issue.
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