Employers insist that parental leave law should remain flexible

Maltese law on parental leave should remain flexible in order to give employers of small businesses the chance to postpone granting it for justifiable reasons, according to the director general of the Malta Employers' Association, Joseph Farrugia.

Since more than 80 per cent of Maltese businesses were small or micro, with 10 people or less, employers had to have some leeway to postpone parental leave and continue working sustainably, Mr Farrugia said.

The European Commission has warned Malta it had to change its law on parental leave and remove loopholes that allowed small enterprises with no more than 10 people to postpone granting such time off.

In the second stage of an EU infringement procedure, the Commission called on Malta to change the law within two months or risk facing the European Court of Justice.

However, Mr Farrugia believes that, sometimes, laws were not realistic: "Laws might be fine on paper but difficult to implement. There should always be an element of flexibility in the law, especially in this case."

The employers' main concern was not to have the flow of work disrupted.

"Large companies have problems when a number of women from the same department go out on maternity leave, let alone small ones. It doesn't only cause problems for the management but also to their co-workers who have to shoulder the burden of extra work," Mr Farrugia said.

Anna Borg, who heads the Malta Confederation of Women's Organisations, strongly agrees with the Commission's warning saying more had to be done for parental leave take-up in Malta.

Very few Maltese men used their parental leave, she said, mainly because of cultural stigma and because it was sometimes not possible.

"If a woman stops working to stay at home with her child, the father cannot afford to stop," she said.

Ms Borg has been campaigning for the government to start paying for parental leave which, at the moment, is paid for by the employers and was a big factor in the low take-up.

The government had to understand the importance of investing more in parental leave because the present 14 weeks of maternity leave were not realistic, she said.

The Commission believes the justifiable reason in the Maltese law exceeded what was allowed by the EU directive and its interpretation was too broad, giving employers the right to postpone or deny parents the right to paternal leave.

"The size of the business is not a temporary factor, which will change with time. Therefore, an employer could refuse parental leave indefinitely, thus undermining the aim of the directive," the Commission said.

In November, the EU Council agreed to revise the legislation with a new directive increasing the right of each working parent to at least four months leave after the birth or adoption of a child.

Under the new directive, one of the four months is non-transferable between the parents, which means it will be lost unless it is taken and acts as an added incentive for fathers to take leave.