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Are You Keeping Track ?
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A new survey finds that the Government is keeping working parents in the dark when it comes to their rights to leave and flexible hours.
This lack of knowledge was highlighted by the results of the survey Parental leave: how much do you know? conducted by TSSA (the Transport Salaried Staff Association) whose members include those those employed within the public sector in organisations such as London Underground, Caledonian MacBrayne and Northern Ireland Railways.
A staggering 80% of people surveyed did not know the maximum parental leave that their employers allowed annually.
Some 61% did not know if the parental leave offered by their employers was paid or unpaid, with 79% unaware of how much notice they had to give prior to taking parental leave.
A total of 43% of respondents did not know if their employer offered any parental leave and 48% had not taken any of the parental leave that they were entitled to.
Parental leave is the right of parents to take a total of 13 weeks unpaid time off to care for children aged up to five years, under The Maternity and Parental Leave Regulations 1999.
TSSA general secretary Richard Rosser said:?Rights to parental leave were introduced in the UK in December 1999. Our survey shows that many parents remain either unaware of their parental leave rights or unable to take advantage of them because they remain unpaid or cannot be taken in blocks of less than a week.
"After more than three years, it is clear that both the Government and employers are failing in their responsibility to inform parents of their basic rights to time off to look after children."
"Therefore the Government needs to properly enforce parental rights to ensure that workers are receiving the benefits they are entitled to in bringing up their families.
"It also seems apparent that few employers are developing work/life balance policies that go beyond the minimum entitlements introduced by the Government to meet the needs of working parents."
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