Senate approves bill on expanded maternity leave

THE SENATE on Monday, March 6, approved on third and final reading the Expanded Maternity Leave Law of 2017.

Senate Bill (SB) No. 1305 would double the length of maternity leave to women regardless of civil status or legitimacy of her child, to 120 from 60 days. Employers may also extend to another 30 days the leave granted, but with the additional month being without pay.

Single parents will be granted a total of 150 maternity leave days with pay. Paternity leave shall also be extended from seven days to one full month.

“Our maternity leave law, both for the public and private sectors[,] only provides 60 days paid leave — 38 days short, more than five weeks short of the minimum prescribed under the international Labor Organization’s Convention 183,” Senator Ana Theresia Hontiveros- Baraquel explained in her sponsorship speech last January.

Senate President Pro-Tempore Ralph G. Recto, in his explanation of vote speech to yesterday’s plenary, noted that, “in the case of this bill, any hostility, if any, from business and capital, is answered by the exemptions that this bill provides.”

“Leeway is given to distressed companies, to retail and service companies with less than 10 employees, to microbusinesses whose total assets do not exceed P3 million, to firms who are already giving the same benefits,” he also said, adding:

“The rationale for these is simple: Maternity benefits should be calculated in a way that should not cause businesses to abort their operations, especially businesses still in incubation.”

The bill got 22 affirmative votes and zero negative votes. It would be forwarded to President Rodrigo R. Duterte for his signature.

Also approved yesterday was Senate Bill No. 462 or the proposed Speech Language Pathology Act of 2016, sponsored by Senator Antonio F. Trillanes IV, which would regulate the practice of speech language pathology in the Philippines.