Island.

For the first time pregnant mothers will be guaranteed paid time off to attend pre-natal classes and will be guaranteed theirs job will still be there when they come back into the workforce.

And if a mother does not decide to come back, she will not have to pay back any salary paid out to her and employers cannot make her come back to work if she decides not to.

New employees will be subject to the new laws, but existing employees will have to wait a year for the system to kick in.

Mothers-to-be who have more benefits under their current contracts will not have any of their terms changes, according to the new law which came into effect on March 1, 2001.

According to Kelvin Hastings-Smith, a lawyer at AS&K, who specialises in employment law, mothers are big winners in the Act.

To make sure the system is not abused, he said that in order to receive payment for this absence from the office, the employee is required, upon the employer's request, to produce a certificate from a registered medical practitioner confirming that the employee is pregnant.

The employer can also be asked to provide an appointment card or some other document showing that an appointment has been made.

The employee will have to have worked for the company for a year to get any pre-natal benefits.

However, to get leave of absence for maternity leave, if the employee has been working for one year at the date of birth, she is entitled to 12 weeks maternity leave. Of this eight are paid and four are unpaid. If a woman has not been working continuously for the company for a year, she is entitled to eight weeks leave, unpaid.

If the mother is to return to work she must give two weeks notice of her intention to return to work, otherwise her job need not be kept open by the employer.

The company may fire her or let the position go at the end of the maternity leave if she does not say she is coming back in the two weeks before the maternity leave is up.

Employers cannot require a mother-to-be to sign a document which requires her to come back to work after birth.

But the Act is silent on the question of providing paternity leave.