A topic about pregnant women.

[octafish]

I'm on parental leave now. Unpaid. It is no way a vacation. In about three weeks my annual leave will kick in and I'll get another four weeks paid leave.

Who gets 12 months paid leave? Even a generous employer here will only give 12 to 22 weeks at half pay and only if you'll return to work for twelve months.

So what happens if someone says they aren't planning on getting pregnant gets the job and then has an unplanned pregnancy? Do you fire them for breach of contract?

 

[SimuLord]

It's considered sexist to ask a woman about her future family plans, but I agree with you---I want to know if I have to plan for a female employee going from my best worker to my worst. Every place I've worked, women who have been hardworking and reliable suddenly take extra sick days, bail early on work because there's something going on with the baby, or otherwise turn into overentitled drains on company resources.

I'd rather hire committed bachelors and run my office like a locker room/frathouse. But that would be sexist and I could get sued. Fucking political correctness run amok.

 

[Vampire cat]

I don't get why it's illegal. If I got a job some place and just very shortly after informed the boss I'm having a baby and need 1 year off, I'd be a complete douche. If it was a really big and wealthy corporation it wouldn't present too much of a problem, but at least where I live most companies are relatively small and run by a small number of people, so having to pay an extra wage for someone that isn't, and barely ever has, done any work can be a devastating blow.

I also think the employer has a right to know if the person they might employ is a heavy drinker, does drugs, has done jail time and for what and so on, to make sure their "investment" (cause that's what it is, make no mistake!) pays off in the long run. I believe in most countries they already have most of or all of these rights though.

I agree that women should be able to take the year off to have the damn baby and such, but just offloading your economic worries on a random company and then take off for a year to have a baby is a really cheap tactic...

 

[Hosker]

Seems like a fair question to me. Employers want to know if their employees are going to be able to work or not; in the short term anyway.

 

[Superior Mind]

I think the question's pretty pointless now. I know stay-at-home Dads aren't the norm but they are becoming increasingly more common. I know here and in an increasing number of countries the Government will subsidise parternity and maternity leave.

On the question at hand, if an employer asks a woman about her future family plans, (or a bloke for that matter,) it means that they would take this into consideration into whether they hire that person. Legally, (in many cases at least,) they can't do that. Best thing for an employer to do is to simply not ask that question and assume the risk or female job interviewees to refrain from answering. The downside of this is that women have less likelyhood of being hired over men. It's a problem that's still being worked through and to be honest the problem falls at the feel of businesses who basically need to just get on and deal with it. Dealing with a couple of pregnant employees isn't going to bankrupt the company, Hell it'll probably cost less than Steve the copy clerk who keeps stealing staplers.

 

[emj]

Oh and no, in a fair number of countries the man does not get nowhere near as much time off as the chick.

Maybe one should read the article on parental leave at wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave], since things seems to be so different. Anyway in Sweden you do get 480 days, paid by the government, spread out over 8 years which are to be split equalish between parents, about 80% of all fathers take no child leave at all during the first two years.

Yes you should be able to be pregnant and look for a job, kind of stupid allowing companies to discriminate against someone just because they will have a baby. As have been said what are they going to do sue for breach of contract?

"When working for us you promise to abstain from sex". That would be great.