You may have seen the headlines in Sunday’s press regarding working fathers who do not take advantage of Additional Paternity Leave. This was revealed by the TUC which in its research found that only one in 172 fathers are taking Additional Paternity Leave (APL). Of the 285,000 dads eligible to take APL just 1,650 (0.6%) did so in 2011/12, according to the TUC. Under APL a father is able to take up to 26 weeks leave and 19 weeks pay when his partner has ended her maternity leave, no earlier than 20 weeks after the birth of the baby. Men do not take advantage of it because the statutory rate of pay for APL is just £136 a week and is almost never topped up by employers. The equality between working parents simply isn’t there. Working mothers receive maternity pay at the rate of 90% of their salary for the first six weeks. Working fathers on the other hand do not receive such statutory benefits. Working fathers only receive a basic paternity pay rate of £136 a week. Therefore, as well as the TUC, we are calling on the Government to increase the statutory pay rate for APL and Paternity Leave. Although 91% fathers take some time off following the birth of their child, fewer than 29% spend longer than two weeks at home. If we want to have true equality, together we need to enable men to build a strong bond with their babies at the same time taking away a lot of the resentment surrounding women in the workplace who become pregnant. The traditional patterns of working parents are changing and this is reflected in changes that the Government is making to shared parental leave, due to come into force in 2015. Find out more about this by clicking here. Equality in working parents still has a way to go before becoming a reality, but hopefully with changes like this in the pipeline, the law will catch up with modern life.
