Question
I was talking to a coworker about the fact that I will be docked vacation and sick time due to my maternity leave. I normally get 3 weeks vacation and 6 sick days per year, but when my anniversary rolls around in February, I will only get 63 hours of vacation, 25 hours of sick time and 3 floaters (the floater time didn't change). This just sucks. On the one hand, it is wonderful that I got 3 months paid maternity leave, but on the other, it just sucks that it feels like they penalize you for taking that time off to be with your new family (or in the case of some coworkers, to take care of your broken leg or go through cancer treatments).
My coworker thinks that other businesses don't have such a policy about docking time like this, but I would think it probably is the case so I thought I would ask others. What is it like where you work?
My coworker thinks that other businesses don't have such a policy about docking time like this, but I would think it probably is the case so I thought I would ask others. What is it like where you work?
Labels: Questions
posted by seattlegal @ 2:16 PM
10 Comments:
At 2:39 PM ,
Caba said...
The policy at my work is that you go on disability as soon as the dr says. Then you get disability pay until 6-8 weeks after (depending on c-section or vag birth). The disability pay is only a portion of your salary. My company makes up the difference so that you get full pay depending on how long you have been with the company. I was only there for a little over a year, so I got 6 weeks of full-pay, then just disability. Once that 8 week period ended, I could take 3 months off for Family Leave (federal law). This is completely unpaid. I could have used my vacation (3.5 weeks) to get some of it paid, but I chose not to. So I was able to take another 2.5 weeks off with full pay using vacation time before I went back to work. I think it's awesome that you got 3 months off with full pay! Most people I know, once there maternity leave (disability throug the state) ends, they don't get any pay. It's just unpaid time off.
At 3:42 PM ,
Anonymous said...
To be honest I think it's nice that they give you an "advance" on vacation/sick time, etc so you don't have to take leave w/o pay (which I assume would be the alternative). So many companies have a maternity leave policy which allows you to use up any vacation/sick time accrued up until giving birth and then only take leave w/o pay.
My company does give 3 months off for maternity leave, but it is at 75% pay. You can extend it by any vacation you have, but we don't have sick time (if you are sick you don't come in and it's paid). Since maternity is separate leave, "sick time" doesn't apply.
At 3:54 PM ,
seattlegal said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
At 5:10 PM ,
Anonymous said...
As I understand it, at our company, you get disability pay for some amount of time, and then based on FMLA regs, you can take the rest after that point for a few months as unpaid or using our PTO. We normally accrue our PTO (paid time off - mixture of sick/vaction/personal time) a bit each pay period. People on maternity leave do not accrue time off during that time. So, in essense, yes, it's the same thing. They get less vacation time that year.
I always thought having a specific number of sick days allowed was silly. Especially when you get more sick time as your seniority increases. So, you can be more sick now?
At 5:18 PM ,
Anonymous said...
Oh, I misunderstood. Sorry! I thought you got an advance, not that you didn't accrue.
I think at my company you still accrue vacation time when you're out on maternity leave.
At 6:33 PM ,
seattlegal said...
Oh, I think it's really nice too. I think it's great that I got 100% paid for those 12 weeks, then I was able to use some vacation and a few days of sick time, before taking 3 weeks of unpaid time off.
I guess I'm just wondering if when people come back from maternity leave or other medical leave, do other companies dock their next year's vacation and sick time? I was docked b/c my employer wasn't paying my salary and thus, I wasn't accruing vacation and sick time.
We used to not have sick time as salaried workers - that changed, I think, about 2 years ago when we were given 6 sick days per year and that we could carry over 30 sick days (originally that was going to be 3 days until some complained).
At 4:27 AM ,
Caba said...
I got ya! I misunderstood as well. I went out on maternity leave in mid-March. But I still got my full 3.5 weeks vacation for 2007, regardless of the fact that for half of it I was on maternity leave. We don't accrue, we just get our vacation starting Feb 1st every year. So I got 3.5 weeks on Feb 1st of 2007, and we get it again this Feb 1st. So no, they didn't dock me vacation time because I was out on maternity leave.
At 8:37 PM ,
Anonymous said...
3 months?!? Are you in the US? You are extremely lucky. If I am ever fortunate enough to get pregnant, my current employer (local government) allows me to use 1 week of my sick leave (I'm serious, that's what the MOU says). As a manager I don't get short term disability. So I would essentially get nothing. But I would be so grateful to be pregnant after 3.5 years of heartbreak.
At 7:50 AM ,
seattlegal said...
To Anon. - I am in the U.S. That is just amazing that they would only give you one week of sick time!
Good luck on getting pregnant! I know how hard it is having gone through that heartbreak myself.
At 12:33 PM ,
Chelle said...
At my last job you had to go through all of your saved paid time off, then through all of your sick leave, and then you had to go without pay for the rest of your time off. It was pretty irritating.
My current job just let me take off all of the time I needed when I had surgery last month and it didn't count against my paid time off in any way. Too bad I hate my job. lol!
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