Paid Parental Leave

Paid Parental Leave 1
PAID PARENTAL LEAVE
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Paid Parental Leave 2
PAID PARENTAL LEAVE
Introduction
In Australia, all employees are entitled to unpaid parental leave. Under this scheme,
workers can also possess extra entitlements, for example, paid parental leave that is under an
agreement, award, and company policy. Paid parental leave is essential to workers because it
provides them with financial compensation when they are not in their place of work following
the adoption or birth of a child. According to Titmuss, occupational welfare is made up of
market-driven social benefits offered by the employers of the private sectors and the government
in its duty as an employer. Generally, Occupational welfare may be understood in different ways.
Firstly, it may cover the services and benefits linked to social provision. Secondly, occupational
well-being may cover other non-welfare benefits not related to social policy. In this paper,
occupational welfare remains understood as social protection that includes both advantages as
well as services, with a functional duty towards public welfare (Borowski and Kingson 2019).
This paper support that paid parental leave ought to be understood according to the perspective
of Titmus's terms of occupational welfare.
Titmuss defined occupational welfare as the benefits provided by employers to their
employees. According to him, these benefits include company health care, occupational
pensions, sick pay schemes, education, training grants, rail tickets, company cars, and subsidized
meals (Gans 1995). Titmuss also argues that these benefits may disproportionately favour
middle-class people (Huang and Yang 2015). This definition is true because higher income
earners that are employed in larger organizations where generous housing, private health,
education allowances are being provided obtain more benefits as compared to lower income
earners. Also, the argument of Titmuss on occupational welfare that fiscal as well as

Paid Parental Leave 3
occupational welfare is more beneficial to people with higher income as compared to those with
a lower income is true in that most of the middle classes will benefits under this scheme as
compared to the poor. Also, the paid parental program would increase participation rates of labor
force by encouraging most women to remain in the labor force especially when they are pregnant
instead of dropping out completely (Brinton and Mun 2015). The argument of Titmuss on
occupational welfare is also essential because most studies has revealed that most kids fare much
well when fathers and mothers have access to paid parental leave. This therefore proved that
occupational welfare is more essential to all the employees.
It is also true that the welfare state may not be applied as a tool that compassionately
guards the Citizens’ welfare because it does not function in a social vacuum. This also supports
the argument of Titmuss on occupational welfare. Also, Titmuss used fiscal welfare as a tool to
measure the range of tax breaks as well as the allowances the government grants to households
and individuals. These allowances indicate a form of social services that can be seen even today.
Even though Titmuss argues that social policy and occupational welfare will meet the
needs of most people especially the middle classes in most countries, some challenges are
associated with the use of social policy and occupational welfare. Some of the arguments that are
against Titmus's arguments on occupational welfare are discussed below. First, Titmuss affirms
that state-supported leave would enhance the outcomes of the labour market and reduce gender
as well as labour-market inequality (Alcock and Glennerster 2001). According to me, this is not
true because ample data display that the entire private markets offer paid leave at rates around
30-50% points higher as compared to proponents claim. According to some researchers, there
was the growth of paid private leave provision for the last 50years. This trend shows that the
industry remains responsive to worker demands. Second, employees cannot be better off,