New law giving mandatory paternity leave 'in place by end of year'
Welfare minister says bill giving new dads time off will go to lawmakers in summer - but comes under fire from both unionists and bosses
A bill to introduce mandatory paid paternity leave will be drafted and put to lawmakers within months in the hope that it can be passed into law this year, Secretary for Labour and Welfare Matthew Cheung Kin-chung said yesterday.
The government will ask lawmakers to make it compulsory for public and private employers to give new fathers three days off on 80 per cent pay - the same benefit workers receive when they are sick and injured. The benefit will apply both to husbands and to unmarried men who can prove they are the fathers of the child.
The announcement of the timescale for the long-debated legislation has been welcomed by the labour sector, but one pro-business lawmaker said the new law would be "scary" for industry.
Speaking at a Legislative Council panel meeting yesterday, Cheung said: "Our goal is to introduce the draft before the summer holidays."
Paternity leave has been a key demand of the labour sector for eight years.
Unionist lawmakers welcomed Cheung's announcement yesterday, but repeated their demand that private-sector workers get five days of paternity leave at full pay, as civil servants do.
Cheung told the meeting that new mothers working in the private sector also received only 80 per cent pay for maternity leave. He said the issue of how many days of leave would be offered could be revisited when the law was on the statute book.