Much has already been said and much more undoubtedly remains to be said in the maternity leave debate. And in Malta that debate is to be fiercer than in other countries given the fact that Malta’s businesses stand to be harder hit than others.

The reason for that is Malta had decided to implement the European Union’s lowest permissible amount of maternity leave – 14 weeks for mothers and none for fathers. That, however, could very well change in the future following the European Parliament’s vote this week to extend that minimum from 14 to a whole 20 weeks, plus two weeks for fathers. MEPs on Wednesday actually extended maternity leave by an additional two weeks from the European Commission’s original 18-week figure.

The issue is multi-faceted, as is any highly divisive issue, and there are perfectly valid arguments on both sides of the equation.

Employers have balked at the prospect of footing a total of eight additional weeks – two whole months of wages - of maternity leave at a time when they are slowly emerging from what could have very well have been a crippling recession. Fortunately the worst case scenario was never realised in Malta, but there is no doubt that businesses are still trying to get themselves back on an even, steady keel.

The consideration is, of course, perfectly valid, but at least one employer body is now saying that any extension of maternity leave would lead to discrimination when it comes to the hiring of women. That is tantamount to blackmail. Of course, anyone, including the constituted bodies, has every right to fight tooth and nail against what they consider to be a disadvantageous prospect, but comments such as these are, in actual fact, discriminatory in themselves.

By all means request some sort of burden sharing of the new measure with the government, but the danger of insinuating discrimination could arise as a result of the implementation of the new rules could very well be perceived as condoning discriminatory recruitment practices that we are being warned of.

Instead of delivering a message to its members that women, maternity leave or not, must not be discriminated against, employers could interpret the comment as some sort of tacit ‘permission’ to do so. This is fundamentally wrong.

After all, that some sort of discrimination could rear its head, albeit covertly, when it comes to recruitment processes is a fact and the message from business representative bodies must be one of no tolerance in this respect, and not one of setting the stage for that to happen.

Malta is one of three EU countries in which employers foot the entirety of the maternity leave bill, the others being the UK and the Netherlands. In other countries it is either shared with or footed completely by the health or social security system, which is paid for by both the employer and the employee.

As such, once the issue goes to European Council level, member states are expected to have very divergent views on the applicability of the new measure. And as the finance minister comments in today’s issue, the issue is expected to be highly divisive.

Whether Malta should go down the path that the vast majority of member states have done will be up for discussion as well. But the government has made it abundantly clear that it is not prepared to begin footing the maternity leave bill.

At any rate, once the new maternity leave is agreed upon member states will have two years in which to transpose the rules into their national legislation.

As the National Council for Women also points out, the National Statistics Office should begin compiling data on women in employment and the patterns of working mothers, before and after childbirth, so that the government could better assess the playing field.

What the government should consider is how its repeated thrust on achieving the correct work-family balance fits into the equation. If there was ever an occasion or a yardstick upon which to measure something that is, after all, quite intangible, then this is it. What could possibly be more symbolic than maternity and paternal leave when it comes to that balance?

Finally, and this is an important point in the debate, businesses, where the bottom line is king and where productivity is a persistent issue, would do well to consider what, really and truly makes for a productive employee.

One could arguably say that the birth of a child - the first, second or fifth – is the happiest moment of a coupe’s life and the responsibility it entails is one of the strongest instincts we have as human beings. A happy employee is a productive one, and employees who have been able to spend as much time as possible with their newborns is indeed a happy employee – and one who will be all the more productive in the weeks, months and perhaps years following maternity or paternal leave.