What would her maternity pay rights be?

oakdale_minx

Hi - this isn't for me (nappies, ugh!) but for the son of a friend of my OH.

His gf is pregnant. She is a hairdresser with 9 months service at her current employer. She is currently doing 28 hours a week and has no contract.

Her employer is sorting out contracts at the moment for all the staff and has just called her to ask whether she would be interested in dropping to 18 hours a week (she made a comment about NI and sick pay).

If she drops to 18 hours a week, what would her maternity rights be?? If she stays at 28 hours (with or without contract) would her rights to maternity payment be any different?

I have no knowledge of maternity pay at all, but I thought there would be loads of you who can help!

oakdale_minx

i've just had a look online - I'm guessing after reading she is entitled to 6 weeks at 90% and 20 weeks SMP at £108 as long as she earns over £84 a week before tax? I guess the number of hours a week is irrelevant?

Betsy__Boop

checkout this site, it works it all out for you

http://tiger.direct.gov.uk/cgi-bin/maternity.cgi

Tedrick_2

When my Missus and i caught pregnant we were in the same predicament, her employer was offering her all the hours under the sun, but would not alter her contract to reflect this.

What we found was the closer to the leave date, her hours dropped, and as a result, when we submitted the application for maternity pay, it was refused by her employer as she had not met the criteria for earning for the past however many weeks (where they had dropped her hours). As i was still in full-time work it was not so much of an issue as we had money rolling in and everything bought and set-up for baby's arrival. It did however, take us until baby was 7 weeks old to arrange maternity pay through the Inland Revenue (it is them isn't it?!?) where monies were back dated and she was given the Statuory pay of £108 for 6 months.

My advice would be to watch the hours of work in the last 2 and half months before leaving, as its a buggar to sort out through IR!!

oakdale_minx

many thanks - apparently she will be earning about £95 a week before tax, i've passed on the information to my OH and he has passed it to his friend.

Many thanks lovely MSE'ers!

Savvy_Sue

oakdale_minx wrote:

i've just had a look online - I'm guessing after reading she is entitled to 6 weeks at 90% and 20 weeks SMP at £108 as long as she earns over £84 a week before tax? I guess the number of hours a week is irrelevant?

It's relevant in that 90% of 18 hours is a bit less than 90% of a full-time contract, so if she can cope with working lots of hours now it could be worthwhile (but not at the expense of her or the baby's health!)

Oh, and the absence of a contract means that things would be assessed on what she's actually been working ...