How much paid maternity/parental leave do you get?

In My Humble Opinion
21

I had six weeks short term disability at 66% of my pay or a max of some piddly amount of money. Because I was pretty well paid, I maxed it and got less than half my salary for six weeks. Which was better than when I adopted my son and took six weeks of unpaid leave under FMLA.

The companies I have worked for have all been very generous on unpaid leave. But its unpaid leave once you exhaust short term disability, your vacations, and any accrued sick time. I have never worked for or consulted for (because you tend to know their employment policies when you consult) any company that has offered paid maternity leave in the U.S. I’m sure they exist, but I’d think they are rare.

22

Dangerosa, does this mean that your company treated your adoption differently from giving birth? Up here, that would be family status discrimination and contrary to our human rights laws and the Charter - both birth parents and adoptive parents are entitled to parental leave.

23

Yes, giving birth is a medical condition, you go on short term disability. Adoption involves no medical condition, so you don’t qualify for short term disability. You aren’t discriminating against how the child came in - the ONLY maternity leave most people in the U.S. get is medical. If you have a hernia operation right before you adopt - you’d get “maternity leave.”

If your firm doesn’t offer short term disability, you probably get paid no maternity leave at all - which isn’t uncommon.

However, FMLA covers both birth and adoption equally - but, no one is required to pay you under FMLA.

24

Weird.

What is FMLA?

25

My office does 6 weeks short term disability, then an additional 6 weeks under the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA). It kind of sucks because the two run concurrent, so while you’re using your 6 weeks of short term disability, you’re also using six of the twelve weeks you’re entitled to under the FMLA.

Northern Piper, the FMLA prevents an employer for firing an employee for taking time off for a medical condition (their own or someone in their immediate family, I think). There are no requirements that an employee get paid when they’re using FMLA, but their employer is required to hold their job for them until they get back. If the employee needs longer, I think that falls under long-term disability and, if they qualify for that, the employer needs to make a job available to the returning employee, but not necessarily the one they left. At least that’s the way I understand it. Someone else feel free to correct me.

26

I got nothing. I was in grad school when my 2nd child was born (and still am!). Like most grad students, I receive a stipend tied to a position as a graduate assistant, but that comes with no paid time off for anything whatsoever. My daughter was born at the end of June, so I took the summer off and then took a formal leave of absence fall semester. Of course, grad student stipends aren’t very big, so when I went back to work spring semester, I spent considerably more in child care than I was earning. Fun! And the irony? I study work-family balance!

FMLA is the Family and Medical Leave Act. It stipulates that employers with at least 50 employees must allow up to 12 weeks of job protected leave for employees with at least a year of service for their own illness, to care for a sick member of their immediate family (child, spouse, parent - no in-laws), or upon birth, adoption, or placement of a foster child. Only about half of the US labor force is eligible for FMLA leave.

27

Interesting - thanks. I take it FMLA is a federal statute, not a state one?

Under The Labour Standards Act I linked to, the employee has to have been working for that particular employer for at least 20 weeks out of the past 52 weeks, but there’s no minimum size for the employer - it applies to all employers, regardless how many employees they have.

28

Wow, this is really interesting! It’s fascinating to hear the differences between different employers (and, for that matter, how it’s different in non-US countries)… I don’t think I quite realized how much variation there is, even taking FMLA into consideration.

Yes, the California law as well is that six weeks (eight for a Caesarian) is paid for childbirth as short-term medical disability (and not parental leave as such). Which, as far as I can tell from talking to people who have given birth, is about right for recovery time.

I’m not envious, because I have no desire to be a lawyer. However, that’s interesting, and it’s good to know my mom was actually right! (She does have something of a tendency to exaggerate sometimes, as you can tell by her original assertation that “everyone” gets three months paid leave.) And yes, you are quite perceptive – this is volley 3,261 in her long campaign to get me to go to law school and make scads of money (and yes, I know quite well that the latter does not necessarily follow the former, but she won’t hear of it).

Another argument she’s been using nowadays is that if I were making scads of money, we would be able to hire a nanny-- even though I would MUCH rather put my kid in day care part time and be able to look after her myself a couple days a week, which my job allows me to do and which I am pretty sure a job as a high-powered lawyer wouldn’t.

29

The Family and Medical Leave Act

http://www.dol.gov/esa/whd/fmla/

30

Hey! One of the rare SMDB topics in my professional wheelhouse.

I am a Disagility / Leave of Absence manger for a large retail company of close to 80k employees. Prior to this, I was a Leave Supervisor for a large accounting/consulting firm of about 30k employees. Both companies are multi-state and the former had offices in California, which has all of its own crazy laws.

What is industry standard depends on what industry you are in, but let me start with the basics: if you company is bigger than 50 employees, it falls under the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA). If you meet the qualifications, they must give you unpaid time off during the time you are disabled (due to pregnancy/childbirth) and to bond with your new child, up to 12 weeks. They do not have to pay you for this twelve weeks but cannot punish you for using it.

Most companies will allow you to use whatever vacation/personal days you have available during this time, to receive pay. In addition, you may be covered by a Short Term Disability policy which will pay you some sort of benefit during the time you are disabled due to the pregnancy/childbirth – typically up to six weeks after birth.

Some companies offer additional pay either concurrently with FMLA or beyond FMLA leave. It depends on your company and industry.

For example: my previous company was in a very competitive professional industry, and had to provide generous benefits. A typical maternity leave would look like this:
– once week elimination period for disability (vacation/PTO use required)
– short term disability until six weeks after birth (full pay)
– two weeks parental leave (full pay, for mothers or fathers)
– the remainder of FMLA, if the above has not added up to 12 weeks (unpaid, unless vacation used)
– twelve additional weeks of unpaid parental leave (vacation may be used)
So the total was up to 24 weeks of leave, of which at least eight weeks were at full pay, plus vacation time.

In my current industry (discount retail), the standards are different:
– Disability period is the same, but pay replacement is lower. Also, only salaried employees have company-paid disability; hourly employees only have disability benefit if they have enrolled in the plan and pay premiums
– FMLA rules are the same, but it is unpaid unless employee has disability benefit or elects to use vacation
– employee may elect up to 4 additional weeks of personal leave (unpaid)

California is an odd monkey because they have special laws concerning pregnancy disability (the Pregnancy Disability Act, or PDA) and the CFRA (California Family Rights Act) as well as paid family leave mentioned in the OP.

Maybe I should start a thread, “ask the FMLA administrator”

31

The Feds only passed paid maternity leave this year, I think.

The practice at my agency is FMLA + the 3 months we’re allowed to accumulate in sick + annual leave. Most people stay out for 6 months. And this is for everyone, including my department, the lawyers.

As it happens, my co-worker is leaving on her 6 month leave in January. The rest of us are splitting her workload while she’s out.

32

My co-worker is taking her full year of maternity leave too. It’s also common here for the mom to take the first six months and then the dad to take a few too.

33

Here a birth mother would get two weeks paid leave plus six weeks short-term disability. Spoues, partners and adoptive parents would get two weeks paid leave.

34

Skammer, that is really interesting. It’s neat to see the perspective of an actual administrator. Since you had both California and non-California folks, did that make any difference to how much the company actually paid out?

Thanks for the perspectives! It’s fun to hear how different things are for different professions.

35

Not that I recall. Our short-term disability was self-insured, so we paid that for the duration of the disability (typically six weeks, but a max of 13 weeks). Then we paid the two weeks of paid parental leave (men and women), and of course any vacation/holiday time that was used.

The California benefits are paid and administered by the state. We had to coordinate our leave and benefit policies with the state benefits and regs, so that was a hassle, but it didn’t directly affect our payout to the employee.

36

I am a lawyer. When I was in a big firm, I got 12 weeks of paid leave (in 2004). I actually ended up getting more than that, because the partners decided not to count the month I spent on bed rest (paid) before birth.

I am now in-house, and I got short-term disability, followed by long-term disability because I was out for a long time, again due to bed rest (our disability policy pays 60% of your salary). In Washington state, your 12 weeks of FMLA leave follow any pregnancy-related disability, rather than running concurrently. I didn’t take all of that, but returned to work half-time 10 weeks after birth, going up to full-time 14 weeks after birth. I received disability (first short-term, then long-term, after a one-week exclusion period) from when I went on bedrest 10 weeks before birth until I returned full-time. (I was rather surprised that they kept paying me for that long - I think 8 weeks for a Cesarean delivery is more usual - but I confirmed my circumstances with the disability administrator several times.)

37

So let’s say you had an employee in CA who was on short-term disability for 6 weeks (due to pregnancy, or whatever). Since that was paid/administered by the state, would it not be true that your company directly paid less money to the employee than it would have to a non-California employee? Or did you take over that payment so that California didn’t have to pay? Or did the employee get paid by your company and California?

(I ask because I am wondering if I am at all justified in saying that if my company were not located in California, that it would be more likely to pay me short-term disability, whereas as it is it is perfectly happy to let California do so.)

38

Public school teacher here, preggo with #2 and due in early January (but babe will come mid-December). First, the permitted time off: 4 weeks before due date (or earlier, if doctor requires–which is what happened with me last time), 6 weeks after a vaginal delivery, and 8 weeks after a c-section. Again, if the doc feels more time is needed (like with my son–he shattered a disc, and I was useless until I could have back surgery after he was born), that post-partum time off can be extended.

I don’t exactly get paid leave–I get excused time off. First, they use up all my sick days, then I get “difference pay.” This means the cost of paying for the sub is subtracting from my daily pay rate. Mercifully, I have disability insurance that will help make up that difference. Not entirely, but it will be a BIG help. I anticipate going back to work when the babe is about 3mos old…I’ll need a c-section (8 weeks), physical therapy to strengthen my back, and a minor pelvic surgery to repair something left over from Son 1.0. I was told that could wait until I was done having kids–#2 here will be it for us.

Hubby gets 1 week paternal excused time off. Again, it isn’t precisely paid; it comes out of his sick leave. He has enough saved up that won’t be a problem.

It’s nice having kiddo born at the holidays, as I will have 3 weeks (3 week winter break this year! WTF?) off that won’t come out of my sick leave or wind up being difference pay. Hubby’s extra 2 weeks will give him some bonding time, too.

39

Now, wait, Ruffian, is that really legal for your husband only to get 1 week excused time off? (Or could he have more unpaid time which he would rather not take unpaid?)

Hmm, lawyers’ responses are 2/2 for three months of paid leave, and no one else (in the US) even seems to come close… Interesting, it seems sort of nonintuitive to me, given my preconceptions about what long hours lawyers work.

40

My recollection is that our payroll office for California would reduce the employee’s pay by the California benefit amount (regardless if the employee had applied for the CA benefit, although it was sufficient incentive to do so), since CA only paid a percentage of the employees full pay. So the employee would receive two checks, one from us and one from the state, with the total amount being equal to their regular pay.