Employers should ensure maternity does not affect female employees' career prospects: Kerala High Court

While directing the Kerala University of Health Sciences to disburse maternity benefits to three contract employees, the Kerala High Court on Tuesday observed that employers have an obligation to ensure that maternity is not detrimental to the professional career of female employees [Naziya B & Ors. v State of Kerala]..Justice Raja Vijayaraghavan V held that employers must take all possible steps to ensure that women's careers are not impeded by motherhood, including by providing maternity benefits to female employees. "The employer is to take all steps possible to ensure that they are sympathetic to the cause of the female officer so that she can achieve her potential in the workplace and the time spent by her to deliver and raise her child shall not be detrimental to her career or her prospects. The Maternity Benefit Act, 1961 aims to provide all these facilities to a working woman in a dignified manner so that she may overcome the state of motherhood honourably, peaceably, undeterred by the fear of being victimized for forced absence during the pre or post-natal period," the Court said in its judgment..The judgment highlighted the cause of female employees, stating that employers must take care to provide all the facilities to which they are entitled. "The employer has to be considerate and sympathetic to the cause of the female officer and no action shall be taken to lower the dignity of the women employee in the workplace," the judgment stated..The Court was considering a petition moved by three women who were denied maternity benefits while working as programmers at the Kerala University of Health Sciences on a contract basis.The petitioners contended that their requests for maternity leave with benefits was rejected initially on the ground that the contract period was for a period of 179 days which is less than the stipulated period of one year. In January 2021, a Government Order (GO) was issued pursuant to the decision of the High Court in Rakhi PV & Ors. v State of Kerala to extend the benefit of maternity leave on full pay to female officers, appointed on contract basis, subject to the condition that the leave will not be admissible from a date before 3 weeks from the expected date of confinement as certified by the medical officer. As per clause (4) of the GO, “no officer shall be entitled to the above benefits unless she has actually worked under the employer for a period of not less than eighty days immediately preceding her expected date of delivery or date of miscarriage”. When the petitioners sought to avail benefits after this GO was issued by the government, the University denied it once again.The University, represented by Standing Counsel P Sreekumar, contended that female employees are entitled to benefits only if they had worked for a period of not less than 80 days in the 12 months immediately preceding the date of her expected delivery. In the case of the petitioners, separate contracts were executed with break-in and hence, the petitioners can be treated only as fresh recruits, it was argued.This was countered by advocate Dhanya P Asokan, appearing for the petitioners, who pointed out that the petitioners had actually worked for years together and that the University had relied on an artificial break-in of two days between the successive extension of contracts.She contended that the State has a responsibility to ensure that a restricted meaning is not given to welfare legislation, such as one conferring maternity benefits, so that the rights of women employees to avail leave are not restricted one way or the other. .The Court opined that by inserting the word "actually" in Clause 4 of the GO, the government wanted to include persons such as the petitioners who have been working for years together. "Furthermore, I have no doubt in my mind that the artificial break-in of two days inserted between successive contracts cannot be used as a device to deny the benefits to which the petitioners, as female officers, were entitled by way of maternity benefits," the Court concluded in its judgment.Accordingly, it directed the University to expeditiously disburse the maternity benefits owed to the petitioners..[Read Judgment]