anybody else completely pissed about maternity leave?

[Anonymous]

I'd say you have it better than a lot of people. My company offers 8 weeks, UNPAID. No short term disability option. I suppose I could have signed up and paid for something like Aflac before getting pregnant to get some disability pay during my leave, but in the end it would probably be a wash. I'm fighting to be able to work from home for an additional month, just so I don't have to leave my baby with someone else at a teeny 8 weeks old. It breaks my heart, but I knew what the deal was when I decided I was ready to start a family.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a fed, so all I get in paid time off is the leave I have accrued. Luckily for me, I've worked there for a while and have been saving up my leave in anticipation so I will have almost 4 months paid leave. My boss is very supportive of family life, so I'll be able to take another month of unpaid time off.

But if I hadn't saved the leave, I would only be entitled to unpaid time off under FMLA.

How are you taking 4 months paid when the maximum annual leave you can accrue without forfeit is 6 weeks (240 hours) and the max sick leave for a vaginal birth is 6 weeks? Or are you talking about use-or-lose that you'll somehow be able to squeeze in before the end of the calendar year? Comp time?

NP here. maybe a combo of sick/annual leave? not everyone maxes at 240 hrs. dh maxes at 360. i didn't know there was a separate max for vag birth. really pathetic way of encouraging a c-section!

[Anonymous]

Fed here. You can only accrue up to 240 of annual leave (because they don't want people accruing 1000s of hours and getting it in cash when they leave, I guess). But you can accrue sick leave as well on top of that, though I don't know what the limit is. With #1, I had enough leave banked that I got 3 months, but with #2, I will only have enough leave for 4 weeks paid and will take another 8 weeks unpaid.

Husband has NO paternity leave at all. He gets something like 3 sick days a year, but he will use 2 vacation weeks.

Maternity leave policies in this country suck.

[Anonymous]

It's a hit or miss depending on where you work. I work in BigLaw, you get 12 weeks at a 100% pay and if you want to add your accrued vacation time to that, you can. STD doesn't even factor in because that pay is less, I think it's 60% or something. People at my office just take advantage of the firm perk.

[Anonymous]

We get zero paid leave at my job. You can buy in to STD (Hartford) and there is a 29 calendar day waiting period that is unpaid. You can use your accrued time off during that time. That equates to them paying for ~2 weeks at 60%.

[Anonymous]

Was the leave policy in place when you first started your job? Or has it changed?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Fed here. You can only accrue up to 240 of annual leave (because they don't want people accruing 1000s of hours and getting it in cash when they leave, I guess). But you can accrue sick leave as well on top of that, though I don't know what the limit is. With #1, I had enough leave banked that I got 3 months, but with #2, I will only have enough leave for 4 weeks paid and will take another 8 weeks unpaid.

Feds can accrue unlimited sick leave but only 6 weeks of that can be used for maternity (unless you have a C-section, in which case it's 8 weeks). After your 6 weeks of sick has been used you can switch over to annual leave, but that's still only a total of 6 weeks + another maximum 240 hours of annual for a total of 12 paid weeks (3 months).

[Anonymous]

On the Fed max leave question - remember that you accrue leave while you are off, and you get to take federal holidays paid and use sick leave for any doctor appointments (which, between post-partum and infant well visits can be quite a few). So if you take 7 weeks of sick leave, carry over 30 days as of Jan 1, get pregnant, accrue 17 or so days for the almost 10 months you are pregnant, accrue 8 days while you are out on leave and have 5 federal holidays you would have 95 days of leave, which is closer to 5 months.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's a hit or miss depending on where you work. I work in BigLaw, you get 12 weeks at a 100% pay and if you want to add your accrued vacation time to that, you can. STD doesn't even factor in because that pay is less, I think it's 60% or something. People at my office just take advantage of the firm perk.

This. I work in BigLaw too (not an attorney) and we get 8-10 weeks fully paid (depending on how you delivered) and then you have to use the rest of the PTO in your bank for the rest of the leave. I took 16 weeks, was fully paid for 10 and then paid for my 4 weeks of PTO (baby was born at the end of 2010 so my 2011 PTO bank filled up in January). Of course, I came back in February with NO vacation for the year but I only work 4 days so I don't really need a lot of vacation.

I guess this is one benefit of BigLaw and I feel really lucky that our leave policy is so good. Most of my friends were only paid for a few weeks or nothing at all. And some had to go back at 8 weeks, which is ridiculous in my opinion.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:On the Fed max leave question - remember that you accrue leave while you are off, and you get to take federal holidays paid and use sick leave for any doctor appointments (which, between post-partum and infant well visits can be quite a few). So if you take 7 weeks of sick leave, carry over 30 days as of Jan 1, get pregnant, accrue 17 or so days for the almost 10 months you are pregnant, accrue 8 days while you are out on leave and have 5 federal holidays you would have 95 days of leave, which is closer to 5 months.

This only works if your pregnancy is timed just right. I'm projected to have 40+ hours of use-or-lose leave by the end of this year, but baby is due in mid-November. By the time I use up my allowable 6 weeks of sick leave, there won't be any time left to use my use-or-lose before it expires on December 31, which really sucks.

[Anonymous]

As an IMF economist, I get 3 months of maternity leave plus accumulated annual leave (3 months in my case) at 100 percent salary. One of the perks in an organization full of Europeans (for whom this is worse than what they get in their home countries).

[Anonymous]

PP here with the almost 4 months paid leave. Other people have kind of explained, but:
I had to have a csection (placenta issues and a breech baby) so I am using 8 weeks of sick leave
I am basically at 240 hours annual leave now, but will be accruing 6 hours a pay period as I use those 14 weeks of sick and annual leave, so that's another week plus of leave.
Throw in several federal holidays, and the use of sick leave to cover my follow up spots and all the babies appointments and it works out to about 16 weeks (maybe slightly more) which I was rounding to almost 4 months.

In essence, yes, I got pretty lucky with the timing of my pregnancy and maternity leave so that I could max out use of leave. Not quite perfect timing though as I'll end up losing the December holidays and the extra hours of leave you accrue in the last pay period of the year.

[Anonymous]

OP here, remind me to apply at the IMF!

Additional question for which I cannot seem to get a straight answer - how much do you actually get from short term disability? Its supposed to be 60% of base weekly salary, but it is taxable. So - what does that mean? Is it %60 of my weekly take home or my gross? What is it taxed at? I keep questionning my HR rep but not really getting straight answers back.

Thank you for your input in advance.

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[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here, remind me to apply at the IMF!

Additional question for which I cannot seem to get a straight answer - how much do you actually get from short term disability? Its supposed to be 60% of base weekly salary, but it is taxable. So - what does that mean? Is it %60 of my weekly take home or my gross? What is it taxed at? I keep questionning my HR rep but not really getting straight answers back.

Thank you for your input in advance.

I work for a private company and ours is pretty similar- I get 6 weeks disability at 60% of my salary, after a 14 day unpaid waiting period. I have two weeks vacation saved which I can take first (thats my 14 days) and then my 6 weeks kick in, for a total of only 8 weeks with my baby... I think this is pretty standard and if you get disability 6 weeks is the industry standard for vaginal birth (longer for C). I cant even take any FMLA because my company is private and under 50 employees, so even if I decided I wanted to take unpaid leave, they wouldn't be required to hold my position for me... So, I feel for you. I also had the same question about what the actual amount I will get (my 60%) and have gone round and round, getting different answers from my HR rep and the company who provides my disability. it is different depending on the policy so even if I had an answer yet it wouldnt necessarily help you; I would say if your HR rep isnt giving you an answer to call the provider directly (My HR rep insists that the information the company is giving me is incorrect, so Im still unclear as well...) After reading other pp's though it sounds like even with out short amount of leave (and as stressful as 60% of salary is, especially if finances are tight to begin with) we are lucky to have that much... Good luck OP.

[Anonymous]

Whether its taxable depends on whether you or your employer pays the insurance premiums.