Bill seeks to give women 24 more days for maternity

Women employees will have an extra 24 days of fully paid maternity leave if a proposed law that seeks to exclude weekends from this workplace entitlement is adopted.

The raft of amendments contained in the Employment Act (Amendment) Bill, 2015 also changes the calculation of paternity leave period from calendar to working days, giving qualified men an extra four days.

Maternity and paternity breaks are presently fully paid for and are calculated inclusive of Saturdays and Sundays, granting women three months off work while men get two weeks.

The proposal is, however, expected to be a burden on employers who will go for longer days with a leaner workforce or hire temporary staff while paying millions of shillings in higher wages that accrue from the extra days.

“The maternity and the paternity leave will now be slightly longer, since they will be counted on the basis of working days and not calendar days,” an analysis of the Bill by KN Associates LLP, a Nairobi-based law firm, shows.

“Maternity leave will become a four-calendar-month event and paternity leave a two-calendar-week-and-four-days event, give or take a few days.”

Maternity leave days were last amended in 2007 when the current Employment Act came into force, extending the period from two months to three months.

The law entitles women to 90 days of maternity leave as long as they give at least seven days written notice, or a shorter period as may happen during health emergencies.

Jobs and salaries of employees on leave are protected in the law that entitles them to full pay.

“No female employee shall forfeit her annual leave entitlement (currently a minimum of 21 days) on account of having taken her maternity leave,” the law further states.

The Bill, which is currently undergoing public and stakeholder consultation, is therefore expected to receive the backing of working parents since they will enjoy extra days with their newborns.

The employer’s lobby has, however, contested the proposal, terming it “populist” and one that will inadvertently lower the employability of women in certain jobs.

The Federation of Kenya Employers (FKE) said the proposals will also burden employers with extra wages for work not done as well as remuneration of employees who stand in for those on leave.

“This unfortunate proposal, which is being pushed by activists, is not considering the cost implication of extending maternity and paternity leave days to the economy,” said Jacqueline Mugo, the FKE executive director.

“When people apply for jobs, some employers silently consider a person’s availability especially for jobs such as marketing and customer service. By increasing maternity leave days, the Bill is doing women a disservice.”

Proponents of longer maternity breaks cite scientific studies showing that children who are breastfed longer have longer life expectancies as one of the several benefits.

A survey by KPMG noted that offering women 16 weeks of fully paid leave, as opposed to the minimum legal limit, would cost the firms an extra $28 billion (Sh2.8 trillion) every year.

However, recruiting and training new employees to replace those who leave after giving birth costs multinationals approximately $47 billion (Sh4.7 trillion) in the same period.

Some Kenyan companies have already implemented the four-month maternity leave period. Others have expressed their intention to extend these benefits to men raising newborns on their own.

Safaricom on April 1 began implementing an enhanced maternity package policy from its parent company Vodafone, increasing fully-paid maternity leave from three to four months.

Vodafone also introduced an allowance for employees returning from leave to work half-day for six months on their full pay, with the company noting that many talented women reluctantly quit their jobs after giving birth.

Nestlé Kenya has also announced plans to introduce a paternity leave of up to six months for male employees who are sole caregivers of their families.

READ: Six-month paternity leave for Nestlé Kenya staff

The policy change, which is meant to give men equal treatment as women, is in tandem with the parent company’s new global policy requiring that all “primary caregivers” be eligible for fully paid leave days of up to 14 weeks.

The directive by Swiss-based Nestlé means that all its male employees who usually have two-week paternity leave will have a longer break in the event that they are the primary guardian of a new born, or an adopted child.

“Nestlé markets that are currently below the minimum standards in this policy should establish a roadmap, with a timeline, to meet them by 2018,” stated Nestlé’s directive to its subsidiaries.

Venatio Mwangi, a human resource consultant based in Nairobi, described the new Bill as a double-edged sword that will benefit employees on the one hand and hurt employers on the other hand.