Nick Clegg is introducing a cuddly Lib Dem regime for families with babies ? just ahead of a major assault on employment rights sponsored by the Tories
It's been a good week for dads. And for grandparents. Even for close family friends of people who have children. All of them, according to Nick Clegg, should be entitled to flexible chunks of parental leave to give them time to change nappies, rustle up baby food and worry about nursery fees.
In a well-meaning leap into child-friendly employment policy, the deputy PM has declared that families across Britain have "wildly different needs" and that cookie-cutter solutions don't recognise this diversity. Parental leave, Clegg argues, should be carved up and divvied out any way that suits mothers, fathers, relatives and family friends.
These are noble goals. But parental leave is an impossibly thorny issue. A balance needs to be struck between fairness to businesses (particularly smaller ones) and easing the strain on young families. And the system sketched by Clegg has prompted protests by employers. They ask how they are supposed to organise cover if every time an employee has a baby in the family, that employee is entitled to take short chunks of weeks or months off at their convenience, up to a total of a year. Adam Marshall at the British Chambers of Commerce says Clegg's plan "shows no understanding of the pressures and needs of small and medium-sized businesses".
Most employers are on board with the idea that both men and women should be equally entitled to parental leave, but they want that leave to be taken in a single block, at reasonable notice. Providing statutory "granny leave" at taxpayers' expense goes into the realms of fuzziness: it would be open to abuse. Pushing the right to leave even further, to family friends, sounds fabulously Scandinavian, but risks creating a free-for-all.
The present system of statutory parental leave costs the government �1.83bn annually. Mothers get six weeks' leave at 90% of their usual earnings, then a further 33 weeks at an allowance of �124.88 per week. Some employers top this up to a more generous level. But it doesn't take much imagination to realise that it's much easier for a large corporation, with an HR department and hundreds of staff, to cope with absences than for a small business. And there's already awkwardness: employers complain that, irrespective of their true intentions, almost all mothers are obliged to insist that they intend to return to work, because if they don't, they'll lose maternity pay. And the rules have changed so often that it's tough for a small-time merchant to keep on top of its obligations.
Clegg outlines an oddly dispassionate view of work as an activity that can be flipped on and off as easily as a light switch. The reality, as many professionals will attest, is rather more complicated. Employees bring skills, experience and personal relationships to their jobs. They're not easily replaced ? particularly for inconsistent, unpredictable spurts of time. One frustrated lobbyist told me it was all very well for Clegg to talk about families getting ahead but "you can't have a civilised society without employment, growth and prosperity".
Curiously, Clegg's generous proposals are at odds with another plank of coalition policy: an "employers' charter" ? yet to be unveiled, but comprehensively leaked by Downing Street ? that will make it easier for employers to fire people, and increase the cost of pursuing wrongful dismissal claims. This is expected to allow companies to fire staff of less than two years' standing without fear of recourse from an employment tribunal. It will cut back statutory sick pay, introduce a charge of between �30 and �500 to lodge a claim of unfair dismissal and generally make it easier to "sack a slacker".
On the one hand, then, Clegg wants to give workers more rights. And on the other, the government intends to make it harder to stand up for those rights. Vince Cable's business department suggests this is all bound up in a broad concept of "flexibility". But it is not hard to see the divergent forces of the coalition at work here: a Tory arm pushing towards an American-style system of employment-at-will, offset by cuddly Lib Dem policies of family leave for "alarm clock heroes". It doesn't make for very joined-up thinking. A Britain in which grandpa can take childcare leave ? but then has to spend hundreds of pounds taking his boss to a tribunal for handing him a P45.
Shared norms for the new reality at Davos. Sounds nice
David Cameron, Morgan Tsvangirai, Ban Ki-moon, Marks & Spencer boss Marc Bolland and BP's Carl-Henric Svanberg are packing their bags this week for the annual global bigwigs' retreat to the mountaintop Swiss resort of Davos.
The theme of this year's World Economic Forum summit is sublimely vague, framed as "shared norms for the new reality". It will be a chance for Citigroup's Vikram Pandit to swap notes with Dmitry Medvedev over a hot raclette. Or for George Osborne to seek spiritual guidance from the archbishop of Dublin.
Klaus Schwab, the forum's veteran chairman, reckons the world is suffering from "global burnout syndrome" and, presumably, that alpine air will prove reviving. As has become traditional, "the other Davos" will take place in Basle, where Greenpeace Switzerland will present a prize for the worst corporate human rights offender. Let the brainstorming begin.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/jan/23/more-maternity-leave-fewer-workers-rights
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