Good news to all ladies! President Rodrigo Duterte has signed the ‘expanded maternity leave’ bill into law. This means that working mothers will get to enjoy extended time with their babies and also have more time to rest before getting back to work.
Former Special Assistant to the President (SAP) Bong Go confirmed this development on Thursday, February 21.
Photo credit: Inquirer
The news was also confirmed by Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea who said that the law was signed on Wednesday.
What can ladies enjoy with this law?
The expanded maternity leave grants women 105 days of paid maternity leave, regardless if they had a normal delivery or if the child was delivered via caesarian.
This is certainly a huge improvement from the current arrangement of 60 days for normal childbirth and 78 days for caesarian.
Understanding that single moms could be doing twice the job compared with their married counterparts, they are also granted 15 extra days of additional maternity leave, making single moms eligible for a 120-day maternity leave.
Moms who feel that they still more time to bond with their child and care for the baby could apply for an additional 30-day leave under this law; however, they will no longer be paid for the extra month. Still, many ladies might want to avail of this option.
Under the expanded maternity leave, the limit of 4 pregnancies and/or miscarriages has been lifted; thus, ladies can claim for the paid maternity benefit even if they have more than 4 children and/or have experienced several miscarriages in the past.
Possibility for hiring discrimination?
While many are rejoining over this news, there are also a lot of ladies who aren’t happy with the expanded maternity leave. They believe that this could lead more employers to choose males over females in the workplace.
The hiring discrimination would surely be due to the expanded maternity leave because many employers would want to avoid hiring women who would potentially be spending 120 days away from their jobs, year after year!
Just imagine if all your workers were ladies and they got pregnant at about the same time! That would certainly be a huge challenge to the company.
But when the bill was filed, the authors made sure to add that the female employees are assured of security of tenure so that they won’t be demoted or terminated from their job due to their pregnancy.
“Filipinos are family-oriented. These industrialist businessmen, they will understand,” said Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo.
The new maternity leave law is applicable to all female workers in both the government and the private sector.
