Maternity & Redundancy

[funnymunny]

I am due to go on maternity leave in December. I will be applying for state maternity benefit and I understand from what I have read, that I have to be working the week before I go on maternity leave, to be entitled to state maternity benefit. I will not be getting any benefit from my employment.

I currently work in the construction industry in an administrative position and am the only employee left, I am also down to a three day week. My boss has been very good about trying to eke out my job until Christmas so that I do qualify for maternity leave. Worst case scenario is that I will have to take my maternity leave early if he cannot continue to employ me. He has spoken about making me redundant at Christmas, which I knew was coming at some point anyway. However, I understand from reading other threads, that my boss cannot make me redundant while on maternity leave (although he can give me notice of redundancy). At the moment, he is not in a position to make a redundancy payment to me so I am assuming that it will be statutory state redundancy that I will be getting.

Am I correct in thinking that I won't be getting any redundancy payment until my maternity leave is finished? As far as I am aware, there is also a limitation of 6 months in which you must apply for the redundancy payment, in which case, I will be on maternity leave for 6 months? I am just a bit confused as to how this will pan out.

 

[huskerdu]

When you say that you are due to go on Maternity leave in December, do you mean that you will be 38 weeks pregnant then ?

If so, you can take Maternity leave at 24 weeks, so you can go on Maternity leave now if you want to.

AFAIK, this is what will happen.

If your employer makes you redundant during your maternity leave, he issues notice that you are being made redundant on the date that your maternity leave ends. When this date comes, you are finished getting maternity pay and you apply for redundancy pay. THerefore you are applying for the payment on the day you are mde redundant, the 6 month limitation for application is irrelevant.

 

[funnymunny]

Thanks for the reply Huskerdu, thought I replied to this yesterday but I must have been offline at the time.

I am currently 25 weeks and hope to work right up to 38 weeks as you say. I am aware that I could actually take maternity now but hope that this would be a last resort as it would mean the baby would only be 3 months old when maternity finishes and then I would be officially unemployed and not strictly speaking available for work.

I had sort of hoped that I would get redundancy (money that is) as soon as I was made redundant i.e. Christmas (I know you would have to wait 6 weeks at least for this) as I will be down around Eur100 a week and it would have kept the bills ticking over.

Anyway, will just have to rejig things.