Family friendly?

Last week, I was attending a childcare committee meeting at work (we’re trying to get the University to offer on-campus childcare since the daycare options in our area are quite limited). A colleague I know in IT was there and she is very pregnant. In fact, she was one day away from her due date. After the meeting, I walked with her and asked how much time she was going to take off after the baby. She said “three weeks; that’s all the vacation time I have left.” I asked “but aren’t you exempt? We’re supposed to get six weeks paid leave!” She said she hadn’t heard that and hadn’t gotten it with her last pregnancy (which was about two years earlier). I told her that my male colleague is currently on 6 weeks’ paid paternity leave and that I was going to call to confirm the policy as soon as I got back to my office. When I called HR, they confirmed what I’d thought (though they were extremely vague about it), so I let my colleague know. She now has six paid weeks off with her beautiful baby and I feel very good about having helped to make that happen.

I would advise anyone who is expecting a child to seriously research your institution’s policies for family leave. All states have family leave laws, and while they don’t apply to all workplaces, they apply to any that have more than 50 employees. You are entitled to 12 unpaid weeks off with benefits without losing your job. Your institution also probably has its own policies as well, which may be more generous than what the state mandates. Many institutions offer paid leave for men these days, which is fantastic.

Second of all, I’m kind of frustrated with how many HR departments seem to try to obfuscate their policies regarding family leave. When I called HR last week, I was told to read the policy online. Reading the policy for family leave that I found on the website leaves me more confused than before, because it says absolutely nothing about paid leave. The most useful passage comes from the staff handbook:

The provisions for absence from work with pay under this Employee Medical and Sick Leave Policy overlap the Family and Medical Leave Policy, which provides up to twelve weeks of unpaid leave under certain circumstances, as required by State and Federal law, and up to six weeks of paid leave in certain circumstances as required by State law. In cases where an absence qualifies for both Family and Medical Leave and paid medical and sick leave, the paid leave will count toward part or all of the twelve weeks of Family and Medical Leave.

A little vague, huh? Further down in the staff handbook, I found more about Family Medical Leave that wasn’t on the Family Medical Leave policy:

An employee may elect to substitute any paid vacation, sick or personal leave for all or part of the FMLA leave. Under Vermont law, the University must provide up to six weeks of the leave as paid sick leave.

And some HR folks don’t seem to know any better than we do. When my colleague was going to ask about paternity leave, I tagged along since I hoped it would be an issue for me soon. We were told that as exempt employees, we got 12 weeks of paid family leave. He was over the moon. And he planned on having that time. But when he formally applied for the leave, he was only given six paid weeks off. Huh?

For a country where people are supposedly all about “family values,” the attitudes towards maternity/paternity leave are really family unfriendly. They are based on a society where men work and women stay home with children. Unfortunately, that has not been the case for the past 20 years or more (heck, my grandmothers worked!). I remember interviewing for a job where the HR person told me that “we’re lucky here that we get two week’s paid family leave.” Lucky? Really? In Canada, people are encouraged to take a year off to care for their child and they’re paid for it. So much for the “family values” platform; that probably has more to do with banning books and filtering the Internet, right?

I know I’m actually lucky to get any paid time off, because there are a lot of people who get absolutely nothing when they have a child. I know that. But I think it’s ridiculous that women should be forced to leave their baby at a daycare center when they’re only six weeks old. And with my University not having a daycare center, I’m going to be away from my child all day, five days a week. We hear the line that women can “have it all” and can successfully balance working and motherhood. I think that would be a lot more possible if our government and our employers did more to make that possible. How much of my heart will be in my work when my four-month-old is many miles away from me in a daycare center?