To the president of Granolan College

After learning today that an anticipated change in our maternity leave policy, namely the doubling of the period of paid leave (to a span far better for parents, babies, and departments too than the current paltry allotment) will not be in effect for the 2005-2006 fiscal year, I have one word for you and your pet governing council, and for your obstructive lawyers too: PIGFUCKERS!

Comments

[bj]

Emma:

What is granolan's policy on maternity leave? Ours, at major research university, is 3 months paid sick leave, for only the birth mother of the child [you have to get a note from your doctor, and I believe they use short-term disability to recover the costs]. After that, there are a variety of options for unpaid leave as well as tenure clock deferral.

Adoptive parents, and fathers do not receive any paid leave, though you are permitted to use your accrued sick leave & vacation time to care for an infant. Faculty members don't accrue sick leave though. They do get 1 month vacation.

bj

[Emma Jane]

It is two months paid for birth mother only—and up to another 10 months unpaid. For the pretenure, the decision can be postponed by the amount of leave taken. Fathers are deeply screwed: no accomodations at all, so far as some colleagues could tell just this year. I don't know what happens for adoptive parents; nothing is mentioned in the faculty handbook.

I've heard that in big departments with similar skimpy policies, sometimes arrangements can be made to put new parents onto non-teaching projects during the relevant semester. Nothing like that here, and also no post-docs, no grad students, no nearby city teeming with underemployed Ph.D.s, so, when women do take only two months (most likely when they're the only breadwinner, of course) it's very difficult for everyone to get their teaching covered.

So far as I know, Ohindinois doesn't do the short-term disability thing for new mothers.

I'll be taking the full fall semester off and merging some of my spring classes together. The dean has agreed to ignore the latter as long as my department is fine with it, so I'll come out with over three-quarters of my normal salary for the year. Not too bad, I know. But they're trying to change to a full semester paid leave, and, because I'm human, it burns me up that it isn't happening just quite yet.

[Rachel]

Will they provide that for all the employees of the college or just faculty?

[Emma Jane]

No idea there, and it's an excellent question. All I've heard has come through administrators tailoring message to audience: perhaps differential treatment might be the sort of thing the lawyers are complaining about?

Or perhaps the administrators are just blaming the lawyers to cover their own slowpoke asses. I'll never know.

[Justine]

Being from a place that seems a bit further ahead in these matters (Canada), I find it continually shocking that maternity/parental leave is so restricted in the US, even at supposedly "good" employers such as universities. At the university where my partner works the paid leave period is 1 year paid at 95% of full pay - birth or adoptive, mother or father, faculty or staff. My own employer (government) provides 1 year paid to the same classes of individuals, 17 weeks at 85% and 35 weeks at 75% of full pay. Hopefully, there will be a change for all of you soon!