Employers face headaches over parental leave changes
KAMLOOPS — There are rumours the Liberal government is going to give serious consideration to implementing its campaign promise to extend parental leave from 12 to 18 months when children are born. It is a potential nightmare for employers trying to deal with replacing workers during those times. Coupled with extending leave is the possibility that parents could be allowed the opportunity to work periodically during that time. The whole scenario is problematic for a number of reasons.
I can understand the need to ensure that we are somewhat flexible with parents in these changing times. Years ago, these would not have been issues. If you couldn’t handle it, you quit. We look at things differently today, and so we should. But we have to look at the issue from both sides. And the Liberal government is not.
Let us look at a couple of facts. Families are having children later in life. That means highly trained employees are away from their job for a considerable period when their value to their employer is most critical. It is more and more difficult to replace those workers for a maternity or a paternity leave. And now we want to force an employer to try and do it for an even longer period?
And let’s assume we find someone. Then we’re going to allow someone on leave to come back when and if they want to work for a few days, a few weeks, at some time of their own choosing? The government hasn’t put any guidelines in place for these changes, but you can imagine the problems. The cost to employers would be huge. They won’t dump the temporary fill-in during the time a worker decides to come back for a short period, so their costs skyrocket.