The Guardian 9 April, 2008
CPSU push for
26 weeks paid maternity leave
The Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) Governing Council has endorsed a plan to campaign to increase public service paid maternity leave entitlements from 12 to 26 weeks over the next five years.
Calling on the Rudd government "to act as a model employer", the resolution spoke of a "clear and pressing need to modernise paid maternity leave", noting the entitlement in the public sector has remained "virtually unchanged" for the last 35 years.
CPSU National Secretary Stephen Jones said it was time the debate around paid maternity leave caught up with the changes delivered over the past three decades to workplaces, household budgets and the economy, claiming that the current minimum of 12 weeks in the Australian public service was no longer sufficient.
"The workplace has changed, the needs of families have changed and we think it is time to take a more realistic view," he said.
"It’s now more common — in fact it’s the norm — that households need two incomes to sustain their standard of living, to pay for their mortgages, to put food on the table, to put their kids through school.
"If one income is lost when the mum takes leave to have a child, that puts a lot of pressure on the household."
Mr Jones said it was time to shift the agenda from a debate about the cost to the employer to a more positive focus on the wellbeing of child and mother. Campaigning for six months as a new public service standard would send a clear message to the rest of the community.
"Why should we have to haggle and make trade-offs for something that should be a right — for a mother and a child to spend the first six months of life together without fear of lack of money to feed them?"
Mr Jones also cited the changing face of the public service — increasingly female and with an average entry age of 32 — as further reasons why the union needed to campaign for an improved maternity leave standard.
The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) has backed the CPSU resolution.
However, the initial response from the federal government has been muted. "We think that women of Australia … are deserving of some support. But we will also only do what is affordable and is fair and responsible in the long term," Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan said.
Minister for Families Jenny Macklin said six months’ paid leave was "unlikely" to be affordable.
Stephen Jones rejected the argument, claiming those first six months as crucial to both child and parent.
"I think you’d have to look at the cost of not doing it," he said.