If you think parenthood is not easy for a working mother, spare a thought for the mum who works in an SME.
Often, these women in small and medium-sized enterprises are pressured into cutting short their three-month maternity leave because there is no one to sit in for them at work.
Some are forced to take no-pay maternity leave because their employers cannot afford to pay them.
Then there are those who actually get fired for being pregnant.
The dilemma that these employees face has been aired time and again.
Recently, the issue resurfaced when Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew hinted that the Government is looking at giving free childcare and paid paternity leave to boost the birth rate.
Many, however, feel some pressing problems need to be addressed first: the lack of family-friendly policies at the workplace and unfair dismissal of pregnant employees.
SMEs, it seems, are the biggest culprits.
The majority of the maternity and termination-related claims come from SME employees, said the Ministry of Manpower (MOM).
Last year, it received 72 such claims. In 2006, there were 85.
Most of the claims were successfully resolved by MOM, which made errant employers pay up.
SMEs - companies with less than $15 million in fixed-asset investment and employing fewer than 200 staff each - are Singapore's biggest employer.
The 130,000 or so small and medium-sized companies employ 60 per cent of the country's workforce, which is 2.75-million strong.
Due to their small staff size, many SMEs are not prepared to allow women employees to take long maternity breaks.
Under current laws, a woman with six months' service is entitled to paid maternity leave.
If she is dismissed without sufficient cause within three months before the birth, the employer must still grant her paid maternity leave.
However, this means an employer can sack a worker from the first to fifth months of her pregnancy and get away without paying maternity benefits.
Advocacy group Aware gets three to five calls each month from pregnant mothers who lose their jobs or are not given their maternity benefits.
In a recent case, a woman was told to take no-pay maternity leave because her SME-employer could not afford to pay the salary of an absent employee.
Her only consolation: The company promised she would still have her job when her leave was over.
Three months later, she discovered that she had been sacked and her job was given to someone else. She is now fighting for the maternity benefits she had to forgo.
Said Aware spokesman Tenley Peterson: 'Companies are not planning and budgeting for pregnancy-related costs. Instead, they push the burden to the women, claiming that they cannot afford it.'
Director of Amrop Hever Group, Mr Tan Soo Jin, said smaller companies are usually the hardest-hit if a staff member gets pregnant.
'Given their small staff size, there are fewer people to cover the work of the person on maternity leave. To the employer, this causes hardship to the company,' he said.
SME owners could not agree more. Not only do they pay the salary of the person on maternity leave, they may even have to hire a part-timer to cover her duties. For many financially stretched companies, this is a nightmare.
Said the director of a training firm who declined to be named: 'Most small companies are operating on thin ice. We cannot afford to lose someone for three months and still pay her a salary. To be honest, I'd rather employ men because of this.'
Three weeks ago, reader Tin Pei Shi complained to The Straits Times that during job interviews, employers always ask married women if they plan to have children soon.
It is common for female SME employees to deny such plans.
The Sunday Times spoke to 20 women working for small local companies. Half of them fear they will lose out on promotions or even get sacked if they get in the family way.
A 28-year-old accountant, who declined to be named, is thinking twice about having children despite pressure from her parents and in-laws.
'There are very few accountants at my workplace. I don't think my boss will be happy if I go on maternity leave,' she said.
Ms Adelina Ang, 26, a sales executive in a small IT firm, is putting off marriage because she works 12 hours a day, six days a week, and gets only 10 days of annual leave.
'I don't even see my boyfriend much these days. How can I even think of starting a family?' she said.
In the past few years, the Government has come up with ways to get companies to treat employees better.
In 2004, it introduced a $10 million scheme called the Work-Life Works! (WoW!) Fund to promote family-friendly measures.
The response has been encouraging. More than 400 companies are using this subsidy now, the majority being SMEs.
In May 2006, the Tripartite Alliance for Fair Employment Practices (Tafep) was set up to deal with bosses who dismiss pregnant staff and who are reluctant to hire women of child-bearing age.
It's co-chairman, Madam Halimah Yacob, said Tafep's guidelines cover areas not specifically addressed by the law.
These include allowing time-off for pre-natal check-ups and ensuring fair performance assessments for women.
While she does not think women working in SMEs are at a disadvantage, she did note a common weakness among many SMEs.
Said Madam Halimah: 'One problem is that not all SMEs have trained human-resource personnel. This could contribute to their violation of the law or discriminatory conduct through ignorance.'
Mr Inderjit Singh, MP for Ang Mo Kio GRC and owner of several SMEs, suggests Spring Singapore provide basic HR training for the SMEs. Spring Singapore is a government agency responsible for nurturing local businesses.
SMEs, he said, need to take a long-term approach. 'While there may be short-term gains from getting rid of a pregnant employee, the company stands to lose a good worker in the long run,' he noted.
At least one SME is seeing the benefits of adopting family-friendly practices.
Staff morale is high among the 60 employees at Tan Lim Motor since it introduced initiatives - from free annual overseas trips to hongbao for new parents - a few years ago.
But things were different 10 years ago.
Its director, Ms Patricia Tan, 36, confessed that she used to be a tough boss.
'I didn't understand why pregnant employees and young mothers were always absent from work. But when I started having my own children, I realised how difficult it is to be a working mother,' she said.
This article was first published in The Straits Times on August 3, 2008.
