YOUNG IN THE SOCIAL PROTECTION SYSTEM
OVERCOMING INEQUALITY BETWEEN PREGNANT WOMEN AND NEW MOTHERS EMPLOYED OUTSIDE THE EMPLOYMENT RELATIONSHIP
Abstract
Noticing the inequalities between the position of pregnant women and new mothers working outside the employment relationship or entered into an employment contract with the employer, we have chosen as the subject of this paper to describe the possibility of adopting the proposed amendments to the Law on Financial Support for Families with Children. These are the Law on Health Insurance and the Law on Mandatory Contributions for Social Insurance and the Labor Law, to enable all the employed pregnant women and new mothers in Serbia to have equal rights.The obtained results have shown that unlike pregnant women and new mothers who have entered into an employment contract with the employer, pregnant women and new mothers employed outside the employment relationship (employed based on contracts on the performance of temporary and occasional jobs, service contracts, copyright contracts or the contract on the rights and obligations of the directors outside the employment relationship) can not exercise the following rights: 1) the right to use paid sick leave during pregnancy leave; 2) the right to payment of taxes and contributions for mandatory social insurance while exercising the right to other benefits based on childbirth and childcare or special childcare; 3) the possibility of the right to other fees based on childcare and special childcare be transferred to the child’s father, i.e. the woman’s (extra)marital partner; and 4) those allowances based on the birth and care of a child for mothers who gave birth to their third or each subsequent child are granted for a total duration of one, instead of two years. Adoption of the proposed amendments to the Law on Financial Support for Families with Children can contribute to improve the position of mothers/self-employed parents; who are the owners of a family agricultural farm; Or who have the status of a private person conducting an independent activity according to the law regulating the income tax for citizens. However, this would not have a significant impact on the position of mothers engaged in work outside of the employment contract, since it does not contribute to the increase of their rights.
Previous financial analyzes of the „Moms Rule“ Association have shown that for the equalization of positions/rights of pregnant women and new mothers working outside employment contracts with the rights of pregnant women and new mothers who have entered into an employment contract with their employer, would require the allocation of additional funds from the Serbian state budget in the amount of between 2,868 and 4,030 million dinars (i.e. between 24.4 and 34.3 million Euros) on an annual level. Based on everything that has been said, we justifiably conclude a solution to the described problem inevitably calls for amendments to the already listed legal documents, including further work on the changes and amendments to the Law on Financial Support for Families with Children, to effectively overcome the existing inequalities, which would contribute to the effective elimination of inequalities between all pregnant women and new mothers in Serbia, who are employed. The key goal of the work is the scientific description of the possibility to amend some of the current legal solutions, to eliminate inequalities in the position of pregnant women and new mothers in Serbia, regardless of the basis of their employment.
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