Maternity Leave and the workplace

[33girl]

Question...

For the countries that do allow maternity leave up to a year, is the firm compelled to hire someone else to do that person's job while they're gone? Or does their work just get shoveled onto their coworkers' load?

I understand and do agree that parents should have more time off, but speaking as someone who had to partially take on the workload of someone w/ an FMLA issue, the only thing that got me and the other people affected through it was knowing it was going to be over soon. If we'd had to work like that for a year, there would have been several nervous breakdowns.

It sounds great the way other countries do it, but think about the people who are left behind as well.