Maternity regulations, indeed all employment standards, set the minimum standard and 'good' employers will always compete with better T&Cs beyond the minimum in order to get and retain the best staff, male and female. However many employers will not offer anything else except the minimum and given the chance would offer less/nothing if they could. Employment legislation is a measure of our society and how we want to treat people in work, hard fought for by TUs, individuals, Governments and many others over the years. Before that the market determined employment terms and conditions and we all know how well that went!Paddington Bear wrote: Wed Oct 02, 2024 5:06 pmMrs PB works for a firm in an industry heavily dominated by graduate women 25-45. There is absolutely a bidding war between firms on mat leave. Given that a majority of grads are women its fair to say there is an increasing free market on this stuff, of course doesn’t particularly help people at small firms and non gradsRhubarb & Custard wrote: Wed Oct 02, 2024 5:00 pmWell some would, quite a number of businesses would actually. But it's blood tricky if you're competing against people/businesses who look to underpay because instantly you're under huge pressure on your price points, so a lot of what regulation is about is protecting those businesses being run as you'd want them to be run (or more like you'd want them to be run)sockwithaticket wrote: Wed Oct 02, 2024 10:24 am
No they won't. And she knows they won't. A few businesses might if they have the good fortune to be run by an actual human being, but such businesses are pretty unusual and generally fairly modest in scale. Mostly, business as a whole has had to be dragged kicking and screaming to do anything that's beneficial for the employee. Regulations are won through the blood, sweat and tears of obviously egregious worker exploitation.
Fuck her and whichever Tufton Strett cunt is handing out her talking points.
Ultimately, she's nasty and ambitious enough to woo the Tory party membership. I hope that will be insufficient to restore the Tories as an electoral force.
There is a solid argument that having better maternity and paternity rights is good for the economy as it keeps skilled and valuable employees in employment during maternity period and throughout their working lives. Poor maternity/paternity rights and high cost of childcare etc results in many women just leaving the labour pool and never coming back. The UK is currently struggling for skilled and experienced works and is one of the reasons our growth is so poor.
