Obama has come out with some positive proposals lately. When I read that he was pushing for free community college I was super excited. For about five seconds. Then I realized it has zero zilch nada chance of passing congress and that it was political grandstanding on his part. I think it’s a fantastic proposal and well worth spending money on – and I’d be willing to pay higher taxes to support it. I could go on about why it’s a great idea, even if it’s pricey, but it’s pointless. It’s not going to happen, at least not during Obama’s presidency. Seriously the best thing about Georgia is the Hope scholarship. I’m not sure what it’s status is today, but fifteen years ago, it was an amazing thing.
Then, today I read he’s pushing for six weeks paid maternity leave for federal workers. On the one hand, this would be a great thing. Are there federal workers out there not currently getting paid maternity leave? My NASA counterparts get six weeks, don’t you, even without sick leave? So, I’m a little confused. Second, what about the rest of the country, all the non-federal workers who actually need the leave? If this was really important to Obama he would have brought it up sooner.
On the bright side, I read that the percent of families suffering major financial insecurity due to medical costs dropped five percentage points in 2014 (from 2013, I think.) I think it’s safe to say that Obamacare gets the credit. That is a plus. I just hope the Republicans don’t dismantle Obamacare. While it’s obviously not a great system, I have yet to hear any counterproposals. My first would be, how about the US stops funding the pharma companies all on its own and the rather smug Europeans and Canadians get to start pulling their weight?
I read in the NYT the other day that people with health insurance use the emergency room more than those who are uninsured. Remember when we were going to save money by insuring more people because they’d stop using the ER? In retrospect, that POV was rather insulting to the uninsured.
We don’t get paid maternity leave. We can apply our earned sick leave for up to 6 weeks of the time we are out on maternity leave. When I had the twins I blew through all my sick leave by the time they were born and used up my annual leave a few weeks later. So I ended up with some unpaid leave. Overall, it is much better than what a lot of people get, but it is still easily possible to end up in the hole if you have a complicated pregnancy or children with health issues.
Interesting. I’m kind of horrified. I can imagine that someone who had only worked a year or two might not have much sick leave built up.
My company provided 2 weeks parental leave (M or F) and 4 weeks maternity leave, 6 if you have a C-section. We do not get sick leave – we have to use vacation days for any sick time.
Right, so if I read Pres. Obama’s proposal for federal workers right, it just makes it official that that a Fed can use 6 weeks of your paid sick leave in lieu of unpaid FLMA (and its not clear its maternity/paternity or just maternity). This policy is already kind of in place at most agencies, but from what I’ve witnessed weirdly applies (e.g. different numbers of weeks for men and women, different numbers of weeks depending on the kind of birth you have, different number of weeks based on what your manager tells you.) But its not really very different than what Feds kinda already have. Its not an extra paid leave bank or anything like that.
Someone in their first year would have 3 weeks of sick leave available; Sick leave banks, so if you aren’t sick at all your first year, you’d have 6 weeks your second year.
(In answer to your question, right now we have the 12 weeks unpaid FMLA. You can use sick leave to get some paid. I have heard various answers on what you can actually take – 4 weeks for a normal birth, 6 weeks for a normal birth, 8 weeks for a c-section? You or your baby has to actually be recovering in some way in order to use it. For fathers they are effectively doing the same thing if they want their time to be paid, using the family friendly version of paid sick leave, so they have to be caring for their recovering wife, for instance, e.g. you can’t stagger it so the father takes off after the mother or anything like that and both get paid sick leave, of course you could stagger for the unpaid FMLA.)
My first thought reading your comment, Becca, was – That sucks! They should provide federal workers with real maternity and paternity leave!
But then I read the rest of it and thought – Holy mackerel! 3 WEEKS of sick leave per year? AND it banks? That is unbelievable. And then my sympathy for federal parents flew out the window.
Seriously, though, I really think most workers should get paid family leave after the birth of a baby. (Most because no, I don’t think you should get paid leave if you took the job 3 weeks ago.)
Oh, and then my third and final thought is, Becca is procrastinating from writing her paper by reading my blog. 🙂
So yeah, what Jen and Becca have already said. Another interesting note is that the policy can often be applied differently depending on who your supervisor (who signs your timecard) or HR rep (who explains the policy) is.
Case in point: a couple weeks ago, I walked past my division chief’s office and he was talking to his deputy (my deputy division chief). One of my coworkers was just put on bed rest, and they said “oh Sarah — you’ll know this — what’s the maternity leave policy? You get paid leave right?” When I explained that no, not really, it’s only paid if you have sick leave and/or annual leave, they were shocked. My deputy literally said “Really? That’s horrible! I thought there was some sort of special charge code for paid maternity leave.”
Anyway, I was fortunate to have worked for 10+ years before I had Emma so I had massive amounts of sick leave. I took 12 weeks off work as: 8 weeks of sick leave, 3 weeks of annual leave, and 1 week of unpaid leave. I did have enough annual leave to cover that last week, but if I’d used it, I wouldn’t have had any leave left over for Christmas that year.
I’m sure you’ve read in many places how the US is one of only like 6 countries in the entire world (and the only 1st world country) that does not mandate some form of paid leave. FMLA is better than nothing — at least you can’t get fired for having a baby, oh wait, at least you can’t if your company isn’t small enough that the law doesn’t apply to them — but it’s appalling that we can’t do better.
The banking sick leave thing is crazy. I have about 6 months of sick leave banked right now, because I only use at most a couple of sick days a year (barring two years ago when I used 14 days for the worst-flu-ever). Let’s just say there are days I’m like “I really don’t want to go to work, please can I have just a tiny headache to use sick leave for?” but no. But I know many parents that use every single day and have none banked. So yeah, the banking does help if you have multiple years of service, and, I think if its your first child and you haven’t already massively eaten into it, or you didn’t have any prior health issues in previous years requiring something like 2 weeks of down time for surgery or whatnot.
And I am procrastinating.
(Oh yeah, and I *think* our sick leave scales with our annual leave in the same amounts; e.g. its 3 weeks per year for first 3 years of service, 4 weeks per year for 3-15 years of service, 6 weeks per year for 15+ years of service… Oh, can I not WAIT until I am at the 15 year service point for vacation time!! And then I’ll probably do something foolish and quit and work for a law firm with no vacation time…)
Yes, Sarah, I completely agree. Why not start with 6 weeks fully paid leave for employees that FMLA applies to (1 year of employment, etc.)?
Washington state mandates 5 weeks paid leave but the pay level is VERY low. But I’m sure it’s useful for lower paid workers.
No, sick leave doesn’t scale with years of service. It’s always 4 hours per pay period/3 weeks per year.
I think some of my contractor friends have used short term disability to provide some pay during maternity leave, but I don’t know the details on that.