The UK’s two biggest unions have backed calls for a review of the “immoral” system whereby pregnant workers lose a portion of their maternity pay if they go on strike.
Unite and Unison joined campaigners in calling for the government to exempt strike days from maternity pay calculations so that new parents are not “penalised twice” for taking part in industrial action.
Statutory maternity pay and some contractual maternity pay is currently based on an average of the person’s earnings during the eight-week period running up to the 15th week before the due date. Any missed days, such as for strikes, jury duty or sickness, bring down this average, and can leave parents with a shortfall of hundreds or even thousands of pounds during maternity leave.
Unite’s general secretary, Sharon Graham, said: “It is totally immoral to penalise pregnant women who stand up for decent pay against greedy employers by cutting their maternity pay.
“The current rules on this are a disgrace and amount to yet another attempt to undermine the right to strike. I can assure you that Unite will not allow our members to be attacked in this way.”
Unison’s general secretary, Christina McAnea, said strike action was a last resort but represented “a basic human right”.
She said: “Pregnant workers and new mothers already struggle with spiralling costs, workplace discrimination and threats to their jobs. They shouldn’t face a financial penalty for exercising their rights. This loophole has to be closed.”
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Maternity campaigners have warned that some people would feel prevented from striking, while others have taken part in strikes unaware that this could have a negative impact on their pay when they become a mother.
Joeli Brearley, the founder and chief executive of the maternity rights charity Pregnant Then Screwed, said it was “unfair and potentially discriminatory” that the right to strike came with more severe consequences for pregnant workers.
She said: “The law needs to change to ensure that in exceptional circumstances pregnant workers still meet the qualifying threshold for maternity allowance, statutory maternity pay and occupational maternity pay despite a decrease in earnings. Exceptional circumstances should include industrial action, jury service, a business going bust, redundancies and furlough pay.”
In 2021, Pregnant Then Screwed won a legal victory against the government over calculation of the self-employed income support scheme (SEISS), introduced to support people during the pandemic. The court of appeal ruled it indirectly discriminated against new mothers.
Brearley added: “It seems to me that there are similarities between the two.”
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One woman who works in admin at a university – in a job that had suffered more than a decade of real-term pay cuts – said that, having voted for strike action before she found out it would reduce her maternity pay, she then felt conflicted and was advised by her union to continue working.
“I decided not to [strike] because maternity pay is shit enough as it is without strike action bringing it down any lower,” she said.
“Obviously it’s really frowned upon, crossing the picket line to work when you’re in the union, especially because I voted for strike action as well, which was a big thing for me. I said yes to something I believe in, I think it’s really important that we strike.”
She worked from home during the strikes because she was not ready to tell her colleagues the reason she was unable to strike.
“It’s difficult because early in pregnancy not everyone wants to tell people they’re pregnant,” she said.
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“A couple of weeks [after the strikes] someone did directly ask me because they hadn’t seen me on the picket line and I had to be like, ‘Oh yeah, I was striking from home,’ and then I felt awful because I’d been lying about it and I hadn’t been striking at all. It’s an uncomfortable position to be in.
“At least if you’re retiring you can be honest with people.”
In July, Leeds city council’s deputy leader, Jonathan Pryor, wrote to the government requesting a change in the law.
In a letter seen by the Guardian, the parliamentary under-secretary of state responsible for maternity benefits, Lord Younger, said the government did not plan to change its position.
He wrote that the government recognised there were a number of ways maternity pay could be affected during the eight-week period.
“These include taking a temporary wage reduction, taking time away from work due to illness or being on strike.
“We believe, however, that the current calculation balances the need to achieve a representative reflection of a woman’s earnings in a way that is consistent for all, whilst ensuring a straightforward calculation for employers.”
He added: “This avoids the need for complicated rules around which earnings should be used – providing clarity for women and their employers and reducing the potential for disputes over entitlement.
“On this basis we do not plan to change the method of calculating entitlement to, and the rate of, [statutory maternity pay].”
Pryor said: “It’s incredibly disappointing for the government to believe that a pregnant woman who takes strike action should be hit twice financially, while anyone who isn’t pregnant will only take that financial hit once.
“The right to go on strike is fundamental in our society and just because the government doesn’t like it, it doesn’t mean they should be able to penalise people like this.”
The Department for Work and Pensions has been approached for comment.
