At my company (in the US and maternity leave is usually 3 months), they hire consultants to handle maternity leave work. Looks great on paper. In practice, someone needs to train the consultants (coworkers); sign off on things non permanent employees can’t (coworkers); recruit, hire, and manage the consultants (coworkers;, and bring the new mother up to speed when she returns (that would be coworkers again). My boss does pitch in, but she’s still got her own work to do.
I don’t know of a good solution. I can accept that maternity leave has benefits to society. What gets me more than the added work is that it doesn’t benefit me come review time that I was here all year and did more work than the person who took leave. If I were to take leave for non maternity reasons (heart attack or whatever), I’d accept that my raise/bonus/advancement may not be the same as someone who was there full time filling in for me. That’s just the breaks.
I was a Leaves & Disabilities administrator until recently at a good-sized company (30,000 employees).
Here, women who are having a baby get disability leave, which typically starts shortly before the birth until 6 weeks after. Once they are no longer disabled by the delivery (as determined by their doctor) they are eligible to take two paid weeks of leave to bond with the child. After that, they have the option to take additional time off under FMLA, which is unpaid time unless the employee elects to use their vacation time in order to be paid. Finally, after all that is used up, they can take an additional 12 weeks of unpaid leave. It’s not unusual for the mother to be out of work for 6 months in total.
New fathers, and all new adoptive parents, are obviously not physically disabled by the birth. However, they are all eligible for the two weeks paid leave plus FMLA and unpaid leave.
Having said all that, it’s your coworker’s manager’s fault for not better preparing for her leave, unless she’s been suddenly put on bedrest or something well ahead of her anticipated due date.
I belive the system 'round here is that there is a certain amount of time for “birth leave” (not “maternity” leave, that’s sexist), which is divided into three parts. One part for the father only, one part for the mother only, and one part that can be divided between them. The fathers time off cannot be given to the mother - he can take it or loose it. I may be mistaken, though.
I am about to go on paternity leave myself. FTR I live in California. Currently, there are two laws that affect me. The federal Family and Medical Leave Act allows me to take up to twelve weeks off with my job protected, but provides no requirement for my company to pay me. The California law allows me to take up to six weeks of bonding time compensated by the state at approximately 60% normal salary. This works out well because there is no withholding. The only financial drawbacks are that I will have to pay federal taxes at the end of the year and will not be contributing to my 401K or stock purchase plan. I will start one of PTO as soon as the baby is born and then start my six weeks after that. I have already turned over all my projects to coworkers and am dong the daily work, but not accepting any new long term projects. My boss and coworkers are all informed and we have everything set up.
M wife went on disability three weeks before her due date and will be off for almost four months. She gets the state payments plus her work makes up the difference between that and her salary. She also set up, interviewed, and trained temporary replacements to cover the entire time she is gone.
Personally, I think bonding leave is great, and not just because I am taking it. Men and woman taking equal time off for children would go a long way towards eliminating the gender gap in pay. It makes for healthier families, and if it was more common, bosses would get better at dealing with it, which is the OP’s real problem.
Bolding mine. I think that is the problem you face, people who have or believe they will have children are the majority and therefore we have laws and programs supporting them. I think these are also of benefit to society as a whole, but I am biased as a soon to be dad-to-be. While I understand your frustration and sympathize some, complaining about it is probably just as effective as when mass transit riders complain that more is spent on roads and parking lots then trains.
Ah, suck it up. Its short term disability leave and if you never have to take it consider yourself lucky. And before anyone says maternity leave isn’t a disability, it took me two weeks before I could cross a parking lot and shop at Target. And it was months after I returned to work where I was truly functional due to lack of sleep.
I’ve covered for maternity leave and had people cover for mine. I’ve also covered for someone whose wife was dying of cancer, someone whose child was going through chemo, someone who had a degenerative bone disease (he ended up not coming back), people who have had surgery for bad backs, bad knees and a host of other problems.
I’m sure there are people who think maternity leave is a picnic, cuddling with baby all day. I was anxious to return to work and I needed most of my maternity leave to recover from birth.
I recently took eight weeks of convalescent leave after surgery. I can’t even imagine what it’s like to be recovering from birth and also have a new baby to take care of.
When it comes to coworkers taking maternity leave, my general thought is, “Better them than me.”
If there was no such thing as maternity leave, your pregnant co-worker would simply be resigning her job - and someone would still have to do the work she was otherwise slated for.
If your colleague (of either sex) decided to simply resign their job, someone would still have to do the work they’re slated for.
So what exactly does pregnancy have to do with it?
Now if you’re going to pit your co-worker for being disorganized and leaving you with all the crap work to do because she knows she’s going to be gone in a week, have at it. If you want to pit her for generally being a slack-arse, fine by me - I don’t know, I’ve never met her. Just leave her pregnancy out of it.
ETA: Full disclosure: poster going on maternity leave in 8 weeks time
In an ideal world your coworker would have had all her pressing projects wrapped up before she was going to be on leave. She would work up to the week before her due date, and take off for a couple of months.
Consider, though, that sometimes pregnancy complications crop up that necessitate a person taking leave sooner than expected. I’ve had coworkers have to quit working a month sooner than planned because of extremely high blood pressure that required bed rest, or a silly baby who thought it would be fun to be born six weeks early. Stupid kids, not respecting their parents’ work schedules.
(I do admit that just leaving a pile of unfinished work for someone else to deal with is inconsiderate if all goes as planned)
I had to switch projects at work (had been working with a known teratogen) as soon as I found out I was pregnant with #2. I felt bad to have to pass the work to someone else. The timing wasn’t expected. Life happens. You roll with it.
As for the necessity of maternity leave after the baby is born - consider that a human body has nine months to adjust to growing a new person and a whole new organ. Consider that the blood volume of a pregnant woman increases 50% by the end of the pregnancy. Giving birth means that the mother loses an occupant, an organ, and a tremendous amount of blood all in a very short time. A large internal wound is left where the placenta attached - this takes weeks to heal and to quit bleeding. All this is assuming a typical birth. Throw in a c-section and now you’ve got major abdominal surgery and all its associated recovery requirements. If the mother is breastfeeding, the baby will likely eat every two hours round the clock for the first several weeks. If the baby is formula fed, it will still be up off and on round the clock resulting in new parent sleep deprivation. The postpartum mom’s horomones and therefore emotions will be all over the board as her body physically adjusts back to a prepregnant state.
Don’t try to tell me that a minimum of six weeks recovery after childbirth is frivolous.
Dinsdale, you have three kids. What was it like when they were born? Did your wife quit work immediately after the first baby came? If so, count yourself lucky that you were in a financial situation where that was possible. If not, remember that somebody covered for her at work. And somebody probably picked up your slack when you weren’t giving 110% at your job because you’d been dealing with a brand-new baby, older children who also needed food, attention, and love, and a wife recovering from birth. If you were able to give it your absolute best at work, you probably had someone else–a mother, a sister-in-law, paid help–who could pitch in at home. Not everyone has that.
We’re not just employees, we’re human beings, and, at our best, we look out for each other in situations like that. Think of it as karma in the bank.
The pay comes from a government fund into which both the employee and the employer pay, so the employer does not keep paying the employee while the employee is on leave.
This isue brings us back to the present glass ceiling problem.
Since women in general will take time away from their careers to have children, it puts them behind men in terms of gaining on the job experience. At the same time, employers will think twice before hiring women for jobs with high end carer paths, out of concern that after all the investment in the employee, she will wander off to have babies.
Obviously there is no easy solution to this problem, given simple biology, but I do suggest, however, that great strides remain to be made in encouraging men to take on a greater role in child rearing.
That’s why I am supportive of Canda’s parental leave, as opposed to only pregnancy leave. It gives men a chance to share the burden of child rearing while the child is an infant, so that women can get back to their careers with less interuption. In short, it helps spread the load with respect to taking time out from one’s career, and by doing so, wth help reduce the glass ceiling effect.
According to the US Department of Labor, in 2004, 62% of mothers with children under the age of five worked outside the home. In 2006, 56% of mothers with babies under a year old worked outside the home. Even if mothers would like to stay home with their babies, the financial reality is that most don’t.
Yah. Where I live, property taxes are roughly evenly split between municipality and schools. Without the commie tax grab, I’d have a lot more money at the end of the day, for I don’t have and do not expect to have kids.
Then I think what it would be like to live in some third world shit hole, were it is every man for himself, and I open my wallet without regret.
I’d far rather live in a country where everyone gets a fair shake, first on basic humanitarian grounds, and second because it creates a bigger pie for all, including me.
And the financial reality is that they will have a harder time rising up through the ranks, partly due to the time they take out to have babies. For many, it creates a low end job ghetto for women who bust their butts trying to get ahead while raising their families.
If you choose not to take part in those benefits, that is your choice. Why are you complaining about your own choices? They’re available to everyone, even (to a reasonable extent) men. You’ve opted not to use them; that’s great for you, but don’t complain about your own decisions.
Lots of things subsidized by the government are used by some more than others. Some people use the library and some don’t; should people who don’t use the library bitch about paying for other people to read books? Some people use public parks and some do not. I had a friend who, when he was brieflly unemployed, refused to use unemployment insurance; does that entitle him to claim he’s being treated unfairly? If I choose not to go to the doctor when I’m sick, or not get regular checklups, do I have reason to complain that you do? After all, I’m paying for the health insurance system too.
As to the pros and cons, parental leave (in Canada, the father can share in the total amount of leave) is beneficial to many employers, because without it there’s a much stronger propensity for experienced female employees to simply leave entirely. Losing someone for 3-12 months can be a lot less damaging than losing them forever. Since most people get only 2-3 weeks of vacation plus a week or so of sick time, not having a parental leave system would effectively cripple a woman’s ability to have a meaningful career and have kids. It’s a compromise that not only has to happen, but in my experience usually works pretty well.
My wife was a lawyer for a corporation. I believe her company gave 2 weeks leave before the expected due date, and I believe she took 6 weeks after each of the first 2 kids. There might have been a deal where she went back 1/2 days after a month and then worked half days or something for another month.
After the 3d kid, she took her 6 weeks and then quit. We felt a little bad about it, but felt that if she disclosed her intention of quitting the company would have dicked her over one way or another. So I am very aware of the need for a pregnant woman/family to work the system in whatever way is to their best advantage. Nothing wrong with that.
I remember she was pissed when after her second pregnancy/maternity leave in 3 or 4 years, she learned that a guy who was hired at the same time as she had been promoted. Tho I didn’t say as much, my thinking was “Welll, he HAS been in the office, doing the work, for a considerably longer continuous time than you.”
We had no one help out with the kids or with her after each birth, and she didn’t want/need anyone. Yeah, we were fortunate that she didn’t have a high-risk pregnancy or have post-natal complications. I may have taken a couple of days off with the second 2 while she was still in hospital, but then I believe I would just take off a couple of hours here and there, go in late, come home early type of thing.
After the third (in about 3 1/2 years) we decided we wanted one of us to stay home, and decided she would be the better stay-homer, despite the fact that she made more than me at the time. I’d end up drunk and addicted to soap operas while the kids ran around the neighborhood nekkid…
I don’t recall anyone “picking up the slack” for me at work, and would be very surprised to hear it had happened. Which kinda gets to the crux of my feelings. I don’t expect anyone else to have to do my work for me - and that’s all I want/expect of my co-workers. That they do their own work. I guess I’m a total jerk, because I don’t really give a damn about my co-workers beyond the fact that they do their work and don’t make it harder for me to do mine. Or maybe I should clarify, only if they do their work and don’t make my work harder, then I’ll decide whether or not I give a fuck about them and their blessed life events.
And the fact that a pregnancy is an elective planned event differentiates it from an illness/injury in my mind. I acknowledge I’m not very sympathetic. But I was similarly a little pissed when a co-worker took a bunch of time off following a parent’s death, and their work was re-distributed. I remember that after my dad died one month after my mom, one person asked if she could do any of my work - and I gratefully accepted her offer. But that was the extent of my work that was re-assigned.
For my entirely self-centered reasons I would prefer to work in an office where the greatest number of co-workers were not of child-bearing age/persuasion. Certainly not a rule that would work for society, but it represents my feelings. Another thing is, my shop has really decent family leave policies and flexibility, so it really appeals to married folk.
Guys can take paternity leave here as well, but few do. The only guy I can recall doing so recently took off about a month, and jiggered his own schedule so no one had to pick up for him. And then he took a number of days of here and there and worked half days, while doing his own work.
BTW - the woman in question is still in the office today. So she could have done her own fucking work instead of pawning this piece of shit off on me!
