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Pregnant Women Asked to Resign

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I am very vexed by this article. I wonder if the writer is a woman. Marisa sounds like a woman to me. I would really much want to write a reply to this but my writing skill is only so so. Perhaps someone can respond?

Monday May 24, 2010

Ridiculously generous benefits will bankrupt many firms

I REFER to “Stay in step with the ILO on maternity leave” (The Star, May 21) and agree with the writer that maternity protection is an essential right of working women.

However, no reasonable woman, working or not, would argue that she should be paid while she is not working. Paying a salary to a person that is not fulfilling his or her job description is economically disadvantageous to the employer and to the economy at large.

While the woman gets paid for not working, there is another prospective employee who may have to go hungry and homeless because he can't get a job.

By asking for ridiculously generous benefits, women's rights activists have bankrupted uncountable companies in the West and now they are trying to do the same here.

I wonder if the ILO and similar rights organisations only consider the rights of the workers when formulating their recommendations, or if they also look at the balance sheets of the companies.

A pregnant woman should resign, or take unpaid leave until her child is born and until he is big enough for her to return to work. Pregnant women are already unable to fulfil their duties because their condition does not usually allow them to perform as they should. The position left vacant should be filled by temporary or contract workers.

Women should not be selfish and think they can have it all, and lawyers should consider that human rights are subservient to the performance of the economy. Every right has a price, and having no job gives you no money to pay for your rights.

A business proposition must be equitable to be successful, and by demanding that women be paid although they are not working, while others are practically starving because they can't get a job, the ILO jeopardises the interest of the mother, the child, and the future of the country.

MARISA DEMORI,

Ipoh.

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gess .. so ridiculous ah!!!

ahh .. where is apekjolly!? I'm sure he can help ah! apekjolly, where are you!?!?!

or get Mabel to reply too .. their English is good =)

Ish .. pregnant women asked to resign! ridiculous la!!!

tak kan they cannot perform in their work place, like us we still carry out our job perfectly ah. ish .. ridiculous la!

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I saw this too in thestar online.

It was signed off with a name which sounds like a woman. However, sometimes the letters which are sent online to these newspapers could contain fake names. I know this, because my older relative used to write comment letters to newspapers using a pseudo name.

So there is a possibility this was not written by a woman. I shudder to think what type of woman would write such a thing.

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anyway i think this woman has a very shallow mind..

only seeing the peanuts not as whole picture..

if this have been in practice... definitely nobody will want more than 1 child in the future

or perhaps who want to give birth??? so what happened to the nation??

then later government will have to take action like what singapore gov did.

give extra maternity leave, extra childcare leaves, extra allowances etc..

and then what is the difference??

or just because want to save the 2 months salary, ask the pregnant staff resign. then hire a new staff..

and start training her? by the time the management get a replacement, and start training the new staff,

the pregnant lady already back from confinement!

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Why pregnant women should asked to resign? My colleague who going to deliver her BB beginning of next month still can perform in her work place. She just can not carry the heavy thing & walk bit slow, why need to b so ridiculous?

So, the person who wrote this article really ridiculous la.

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it is not the ridiculous generous benefits that will bankrupt the company, but the people in the company that made suggestions/comments like this writers will bankrupt the company!!

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Not matter the writter is a male or female... why dont he/she think of he/she also delivered by his/her mom who also need to go thru the painful cycle & required sufficient rest time to recover????

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No matter is he or she, attitude is selfish and only care of company profit. We as human live in this world, not only work work work, we need to spend time with family and do some activities we like. I pity for the staffs if he/she is a boss. I pity for the colleague if he/she is a staff.

bcos of got this kind of human exist in this world, our world is become more chaos.

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Hi people...

I also disagree with the response towards the article of resiging and taking unpaid maternity leave is really absurd! However, I googled up this person, Marisa Demori. Apparently, he/she is an active respondent to almost all major newspapers. I don't know who is this person but I've a feeling the response article was put up purposely to garner the attention of readers. Or perhaps, get people to start talking! No dumb idiot who owns a newspaper industry would even put up such a response article... It's ludicrous! Is The Star paper loosing readers? Gossip tabloids like that will sure stir up response... smart...

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Hi people...

I also disagree with the response towards the article of resiging and taking unpaid maternity leave is really absurd! However, I googled up this person, Marisa Demori. Apparently, he/she is an active respondent to almost all major newspapers. I don't know who is this person but I've a feeling the response article was put up purposely to garner the attention of readers. Or perhaps, get people to start talking! No dumb idiot who owns a newspaper industry would even put up such a response article... It's ludicrous! Is The Star paper loosing readers? Gossip tabloids like that will sure stir up response... smart...

i agree eileen

the article is so ignorantly written, i think it was done for attention.

It is like saying - if you are sick or meet with an accident, u should take annual/unpaid leave untill u are well

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Actually last time when I was in college, my friend worked as an intern in a local newspaper.

She found out that once in awhile they 'create' interesting letters to provoke reader's response or to gather more readers. After hearing her story, everytime i read absurb articles/letters I dont get so worked up coz it might be made up...

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Next year, the Australian government is going to give four and a half months of paid maternity leave to women workers. What does this show? It shows that when a country is already sufficiently advanced and the thinking of its people is also already intellectually mature, the contribution of women to society is duly recognized. When I talk about women's contribution here, I'm talking about the very basic level of things.

Okay, the basic of things: Consider all the human beings that populate this world. Where do they come from? Do humans grow out of the ground like mushrooms? No, right? Humans have to be born by their mothers. And is it an easy job to be pregnant for nine months and then deliver babies? Nobody would want to have that job if they can avoid it. But female humans are already given this very heavy and very risky job by nature. If fellow humans don't want to pay them for that job, who else want to pay them? When a person is employed, his work is a kind of contribution to life on earth. When a person lets her own body to be used for nurturing and producing a next generation of human, that is also a form of contribution to life on earth, albeit a bigger contribution even. That is the big picture of things. See it now?

But I can forgive that writer to The Star for not being able to see the big picture. He sees only the tree, but cannot see the forest. Well, to be fair, he does have his special points. If you have a company, of course you'd not want to pay a worker that doesn't work for you. The thing is that, if you own a company whose capacity is not able to pay a worker for maternity leave, then you should not, in the first instance, employ someone who is likely to take such leave.

In my opinion, a capable company should provide paid maternity leave to a maximum of at least two children. Why there is a maximum is partly to prevent abuse of the privilege by, for example, giving birth every year up to more than ten children. Imagine you do that in Australia!

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for my company already stated in their policy that

each staffs are entitle to Maternity leave for not more than 5 surviving natural (not adopted) children.

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It's quite sad to read this article from the Star, but I think there is a lot of employers out there actually agrees with what "Marisa Demori" writes.

Recently, I printed the "90 Days For Mums" 1 Million Signature Campaign initiated by NUBE and pasted at my workstation. When some colleagues saw it (esp. male), they commented, "Hey, 60 days is a lot of already. When you women go for maternity leave, we have to cover your work and we don't get paid for that". I think these people has totally lost the big picture, like how women change the work place, contribute to national productivity and at the same time bearing maternal responsibilities. Women nowadays have done and accomplished so much! Can you ever imagine a workplace without women?? Who's going to do all the routine and meticulous admin / accounting work?

Attached below is the link to the petition, take some time to read and support (if this is what you want for your loved ones):

http://www.nube.org.my/pd/petitionE.aspx

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for my company already stated in their policy that

each staffs are entitle to Maternity leave for not more than 5 surviving natural (not adopted) children.

Same as my company policy….

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for my company already stated in their policy that

each staffs are entitle to Maternity leave for not more than 5 surviving natural (not adopted) children.

Same as my company policy….

That's in accordance to the Labour Law thus most companies will just adopt it to avoid any potential dispute.

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I've read a couple of controversial letters by the same writer before - something about how pensioners shouldn't expect anything from the government and should rely on their children to feed them so I'd take whatever that writer says with a pinch of salt.

So going by the writer's argument, does that mean that we should also do away with medical/hospitalization leave as employees are also not working during that period of time and shouldn't expect anything from their companies?! Seems like we're going back to those days whereby if the breadwinner of the family is unable to work, the whole family gets thrown onto the streets!

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I wrote a reply to the Star and posted it on my blog. One thing is for sure, if Marisa is capable of such thoughts, you can bet that there are others just like her out there.

My dad circulated my reply to the Star and one fella came back stating that s/he (who is a certified traditional old-fashioned individual) believes that woman should stick to just being homemakers - which completely misses the point that I was trying to make...

...which is that women have the toughest job in the world and we still don't recognize it for all our boasting of being a country with good old Asian values.

And what is that job?

Nurturing and caring and educating the next generation of citizens.

In fact, I think some mothers are not even aware of how big this job is or demands from them. But that's another matter la.

Those so-called budaya kuning countries have allocated over 12 weeks of maternity leave to their mothers. The best is Sweden where you can get up to SIXTEEN MONTHS of paid maternity leave with two months of it being compulsory for fathers. Are companies there broke? In fact, the Scandinavian countries have the best quality of life index and this is one of the things that is factored into that index! Developed nations realized long ago that the best nurturers and moulders of their citizens are parents and that education starts from birth and at home. This is why work-life balance is very important to these angmohs. It's not because they are lazy but because there are more important things in life other than work work work.

And honestly, do you women go around having kids without a care in the world? Who the heck rushes out to get pregnant just to take those few months of maternity leave? To even suggest that women can potentially abuse the system is...well...IMHO, missing the mark. Children are a lifetime commitment and from what I have seen, NO ONE with a career or in the workforce has a child on a whim or just so that they can go on leave.

But why cap maternity leave to a certain number of kids in the first place? Are we trying to say that a mother who has more kids doesn't deserve maternity leave as much as a mother with one child? That's discrimination already. Can someone please explain to me the rationale behind the ceiling for maternity leave and no of children?

This is where the Government has to step in and ensure their laws are up to date and sufficient for the well-being of their citizens, especially their women. At the end of the day, it is mothers who do most of the caring for their children and they can do a way better job if they had less to worry about, and more time to spend with their families. Just because it's the law doesn't mean it's written in blood and set in stone. Laws can be draconian and outdated - just like how M'sian women married to foreigners and have kids abroad (out of SG as well) cannot transfer their citizenship to their kids. It demeans women and gives citizens more excuse to move to other countries who appreciate people better.

Remember this ladies (and gents) - The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world.

And while we're talking about maternity leave, why the heck aren't fathers given more paternity leave? What is the message that we're sending across to people? "OH, get married but once you get married, you're on your own." We offer preciously little support to new parents and that SHOULD NOT be the case.

Don't just sign papers. Vote and exercise your right as a citizen, people. Talk to your MP about this. Don't just complain to your friends but to the right people, to where it matters.

ps: Did you know that in Switzerland you CANNOT fire a pregnant woman or ask her to resign?

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This topic got me googling and chatting with an American friend.

I was so shocked to find out that there is NO national policy on maternity rights in the US :ohmy::ohmy::ohmy:

Meaning 0 days paid maternity leave, and only 12 weeks of unpaid leave.

That said, it can differ from company to company. If a company is generous, it might offer some paid days/weeks for maternity leave.

I wonder which company would actually do that if there isn't even any policy on this. When I expressed shock at my American friend, he simply said that one should learn to "save up".

Wow.

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Are you sure that there is no national policy of maternity rights? The country that has seen the struggles of the world's first women's revolution? (apart from Great Britain). The great advocate of human rights?? :blink: ..

Sure or not wan ah~

This topic got me googling and chatting with an American friend.

I was so shocked to find out that there is NO national policy on maternity rights in the US :ohmy::ohmy::ohmy:

Meaning 0 days paid maternity leave, and only 12 weeks of unpaid leave.

That said, it can differ from company to company. If a company is generous, it might offer some paid days/weeks for maternity leave.

I wonder which company would actually do that if there isn't even any policy on this. When I expressed shock at my American friend, he simply said that one should learn to "save up".

Wow.

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But I can forgive that writer to The Star for not being able to see the big picture. He sees only the tree, but cannot see the forest. Well, to be fair, he does have his special points. If you have a company, of course you'd not want to pay a worker that doesn't work for you. The thing is that, if you own a company whose capacity is not able to pay a worker for maternity leave, then you should not, in the first instance, employ someone who is likely to take such leave.

Apekjolly, you're right to say that it makes no logical financial sense to hire someone who is not giving you the service originally intended for.

"(not) employ someone who is likely to take such leave"--> that would defeat the purpose of "equal opportunity employer"

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Are you sure that there is no national policy of maternity rights? The country that has seen the struggles of the world's first women's revolution? (apart from Great Britain). The great advocate of human rights?? :blink: ..

Sure or not wan ah~

This topic got me googling and chatting with an American friend.

I was so shocked to find out that there is NO national policy on maternity rights in the US :ohmy::ohmy::ohmy:

Meaning 0 days paid maternity leave, and only 12 weeks of unpaid leave.

That said, it can differ from company to company. If a company is generous, it might offer some paid days/weeks for maternity leave.

I wonder which company would actually do that if there isn't even any policy on this. When I expressed shock at my American friend, he simply said that one should learn to "save up".

Wow.

Read to believe:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2005-0...ity-leave_x.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave

The thing is, feminist movements in Europe and US back then were fighting for different things.

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