OVERCOMING PARENTAL LEAVE OBSTACLES

I HAVE no idea as to how employers will be able to influence both mother and father on when and how the leave will be divided and how it affects the operational requirements of employers.

- MICHAEL BAGRAIM

Employers will be forced to speak to each other when respective parents are working at two employers. Those employers might be competitors.

I strongly believe that the Department of Employment and Labour will have to put up protocols for handling these arrangements. Currently there is an arrangement that an expectant mother would have to tell her own employer when she will be going off for maternity leave and when she’s going to be coming back. These duties on expectant parents will have to be extended and refined by the department.

There will also be duties on the employers to keep strict records of who goes on paternity leave and when. I have a suspicion that the first few years of the implementation of this new law will be chaotic.

In a very interesting development in the parental leave Constitutional Court case, the judge outlined that within 36 months all the legislation pertaining to maternity leave must be changed. Many individuals have asked me why this was put in and why so long?