The US has such terrible family leave policies. I hate that the mentality in our country is that work is the most important part of our lives, and everything else should be scheduled around it.
Family leave in this country just disgusts me. Just out of curiosity for anyone who wants to share, who here has actual paid leave (not counting vacation, sick pay, or other accrued time or STD that you paid into)?
My firm makes me whole the first month after having a baby. I'm a CPA. I get disability from the state that caps out at a dollar amount or 55% of your income for the first 6 or 8 week and then I get some family bonding pay through the state. Of course, we pay through these with taxes, so it's not really as great as it seems. After the first month, I will use my PTO accrual to make up the difference in pay. I should have about 25 days accrued by the time I go on leave.
DH gets 6 weeks paid paternity leave, but probably won't be able to use it all since he's super busy all the time at work and generally overworked anyway. He's a software engineer.
ETA: I think the % is off above - the 55% is PFL the SDI is higher. It's the same as PP in CA.
Post by frecklesnbrains on Feb 4, 2016 12:15:53 GMT -5
babyzebra, I had the same reaction about my DH's new job's lack of paternity leave because the company otherwise provides GREAT benefits. It's actually been rated one of the top 10 companies to work for in the greater Boston area, so I was really surprised.
I didn't know what the paid leave was going to be with DS so we saved up 3 months of my take home pay before having DS to make sure we'd be covered because I was paranoid and only knew that paid leave in the US sucks. While my firm's paid leave isn't as good as some others and it'd be nice for DH to actually take his full leave, I'm just glad we get something. And I've worked hard to accrue PTO and not use it so I have enough saved up to help a lot during my leave.
I get zero paid leave. I do qualify for FMLA and will take 12 weeks by combining 8 weeks of STD (at 60% pay) and 4 weeks "vacation". Technically I don't get that much vacation but no one counts so I think I can get away with it. I also don't have the type of job that I can entirely turn off for 3 months, so I expect to be doing a lot of remote working, conference calls, grant-writing from home, etc during my "leave".
frecklesnbrains - check with your HR. If you're on FMLA, I always assumed you can NOT work and they cannot expect you to do anything. DH is in HR - and he pretty explictely told me this is forbidden by law.
I get zero paid leave. I do qualify for FMLA and will take 12 weeks by combining 8 weeks of STD (at 60% pay) and 4 weeks "vacation". Technically I don't get that much vacation but no one counts so I think I can get away with it. I also don't have the type of job that I can entirely turn off for 3 months, so I expect to be doing a lot of remote working, conference calls, grant-writing from home, etc during my "leave".
frecklesnbrains - check with your HR. If you're on FMLA, I always assumed you can NOT work and they cannot expect you to do anything. DH is in HR - and he pretty explictely told me this is forbidden by law.
My HR told me yesterday that you can't do anything while on disability, but you can while on family bonding time.
I get zero paid leave. I do qualify for FMLA and will take 12 weeks by combining 8 weeks of STD (at 60% pay) and 4 weeks "vacation". Technically I don't get that much vacation but no one counts so I think I can get away with it. I also don't have the type of job that I can entirely turn off for 3 months, so I expect to be doing a lot of remote working, conference calls, grant-writing from home, etc during my "leave".
frecklesnbrains - check with your HR. If you're on FMLA, I always assumed you can NOT work and they cannot expect you to do anything. DH is in HR - and he pretty explictely told me this is forbidden by law.
What Flair Underwood said. With DS I remember it being made abundantly clear by HR that if I was caught working, I and the company could both be in some trouble since they were essentially paying me to be on disability. I still checked emails so I wasn't completely in the dark when I came back, but I took that warning as a sign to enjoy my leave and to focus on my family for a while. I was a workaholic before he was born and it really helped me to reset my thought patterns surrounding work.
This is obviously based on what your company provides, but definitely worth checking into.
What Flair Underwood said. With DS I remember it being made abundantly clear by HR that if I was caught working, I and the company could both be in some trouble since they were essentially paying me to be on disability. I still checked emails so I wasn't completely in the dark when I came back, but I took that warning as a sign to enjoy my leave and to focus on my family for a while. I was a workaholic before he was born and it really helped me to reset my thought patterns surrounding work.
This is obviously based on what your company provides, but definitely worth checking into.
All very wise advice, but I work in academia so HR has no clue what I ACTUALLY do. I'm okay with keeping it that way because it gives me a huge amount of flexibility otherwise (I take more vacation time than I'm officially allotted and work a good number of half-days and days-from-home). At the end of the day I have no obligations to HR or even to the organization as a whole, only to myself and my colleagues. If I don't stay partially on top of what's going on then I will never secure grant funding and then my career is screwed. It's probably a totally different story in the private sector.
When I was a teacher and took maternity leave for my DS ( I just started being a SAHM), I also go no paid sick leave, and was required to use my vacation days first. That was hard because then I had no days left when he got sick and my DH had to take off. You know what's crazy? My BIL works from home for Apple and does hourly work (makes $10/hour I think) and he gets SIX WEEKS off-PAID! That's awesome. Good job, Apple. My DH will take one week off-but he will use FMLA unpaid leave that way we don't have to use up his 2 weeks of vacation.
IN OTHER NEWS....the baby looks GREAT! The appointment went really well!!!! The cysts are GONE! Her heart looks good and the specialist was really pleased! My cervix is long and closed so no explanation for the spotting. Overall, I am really thankful and happy. It was fun to see her moving around, swallowing, stretching, etc. She weighs 1 pound 4 ounces. So thankful. Thank you for all the thoughts and prayers. I still have placenta previa, but it has moved and is now only considered low lying or marginal previa. I still have to go back in 5 weeks for a sonogram because they want it to be 2.5 cm from the cervix and mine is like 1cm, but it's moving in the right direction. SO RELIEVED!!! Now I'm going on Amazon to buy some baby stuff to celebrate.
Good appointment with the GI doc today, looking forward to my A/S tomorrow .
We get no paid leave. I'll be using a combination of sick leave, annual leave, and leave without pay. I haven't figured out how much I'm going to take yet-- thanks to the union I can take up to six months, but I need to figure out if that will work for us financially and if I want to be away that long.
Ugh the whole thing on requirements forcing someone to exhaust all sick leave and PTO before being able to receive other types of leave is the most ridiculous thing ever. It's as if someone went out of their way to think up ways to make the transition back to work after having a new baby even more difficult than it already is for families.
I am so tired today, baby woke me up with kicks around 5:30am, I was actually dreaming and in the dream felt a thump, thump, thump. Thanks kid.
Post by woodengirl07 on Feb 4, 2016 15:11:22 GMT -5
I also was sure it was Friday today. Boo.
I work for state government, and we have zero leave policy for maternity/paternity. I am going to have to go on FMLA. It is unpaid for 12 weeks, unless you have leave to use. I currently have about 650 hours of leave saved up, so I should be paid out the whole time. Because I make more than DH and I carry our health insurance, it was important to make sure that I had the leave. I am hoping that I might be able to go on some sort of STD, but I don't really know. I have so many drs appointments due to being high risk, I hopefully can keep at least the full 480 hours of leave to pay out the 12 weeks.
My husband works for a small company so he'll probably be able to take a week off when the baby comes, but that's about it. Luckily he is really good friends with his boss (since they were teenagers) so he gets a lot of leeway to flex his time to be at all the drs appointment with me. He'll probably be able to flex during the 12 weeks I'll be off as well.
IN OTHER NEWS....the baby looks GREAT! The appointment went really well!!!! The cysts are GONE! Her heart looks good and the specialist was really pleased! My cervix is long and closed so no explanation for the spotting. Overall, I am really thankful and happy. It was fun to see her moving around, swallowing, stretching, etc. She weighs 1 pound 4 ounces. So thankful. Thank you for all the thoughts and prayers. I still have placenta previa, but it has moved and is now only considered low lying or marginal previa. I still have to go back in 5 weeks for a sonogram because they want it to be 2.5 cm from the cervix and mine is like 1cm, but it's moving in the right direction. SO RELIEVED!!! Now I'm going on Amazon to buy some baby stuff to celebrate.
Great news! I'm in the same boat with the unexplained spotting, so let's hope we both stop that!
Post by origamimommy on Feb 4, 2016 15:27:45 GMT -5
Ugh, all of this talk about leave makes me so sad. I left my job a couple of months ago where I would have qualified for FMLA and I would have had 6 weeks at 100% and 6 weeks unpaid (or using vacation time). Now I get nothing. I don't qualify for STD until July and I'm due in mid-June so that's not happening. But I will get the full 12 weeks, I just have to apply for bonding time. I may see if I can work part time the second half of my leave from home to make at least some money during those months and cover my benefits. I am meeting with HR about it soon.
Post by manybellsdown on Feb 4, 2016 16:24:04 GMT -5
I don't know what I was expecting as answers to the question on leave policies, but I'm pretty much pissed that so many of us have said "no paid leave here."
I get none as well. I qualify for FMLA, and I can use accrued paid and sick leave to keep getting paid. They will also advance me 6 weeks of sick leave, which will take years to earn back but whatever. Also there is a ridiculous rule that sick leave can't be used for "bonding," so beyond six weeks, you need to use regular PTO or unpaid FMLA.
Another teacher here. I'll be using accumulated sick leave. I have about 60 days and assuming I go around my due date and don't miss much at the end of the year, I'll be using around 45 of them in September to have a little extra time at home. We are supposed to get some bad weather tonight. If it gets really cold I hope we get a snow day. Its been raining all day and I don't feel like navigating the solid block of ice it will be outside if it all freezes. Not to mention the fun of defrosting a car at 6 am.
Another teacher here. I'll be using accumulated sick leave. I have about 60 days and assuming I go around my due date and don't miss much at the end of the year, I'll be using around 45 of them in September to have a little extra time at home. We are supposed to get some bad weather tonight. If it gets really cold I hope we get a snow day. Its been raining all day and I don't feel like navigating the solid block of ice it will be outside if it all freezes. Not to mention the fun of defrosting a car at 6 am.
I wish we could use our sick days after our doctor's note expires.
Holy moly I feel like I've been Mia for days. I've been trying to read here and there and like all the great announcements but haven't contributed. Congrats txmommy14!! I get 6 weeks 50% salary. I work from home so I can ease back into work but it wasn't enough time off with ds and if I don't work I don't get paid and we def need my salary. My husband is a coach and we had ds at the start of his season. That was awful cause he was gone immediately all the time. This time around it will be his "off season" for two months so he should be around a little more. He works for a university with great benefits but as a coach he rarely gets days off. He has a billion hours saved up but I doubt we'll ever see those.
My week has been hard. Ds hit kids at school Monday and Tuesday. He got a great report today but it's been stressing me out. He's a good boy so I'm not sure why he's being physical. His school decided to take tomorrow off so i have to take the day off and we just started tax season so I'm stressed. So I guess today is my Friday
As I was putting ds to sleep tonight he put his head on my belly and sang happy birthday baby brother. He kept giving my belly kisses. That's the boy I know and he melted my little heart.
I work for a small company with no official maternity leave at all. No FMLA. No job security. No vacation time. Nothing. However, bc I'm high up the chain, my boss paid me at 100% through the 10 weeks I took off with dd1. I did a lot of work from home during that time - so I know that helped my situation. I was shocked bc we hadn't even discussed it in advance. I assumed it would be nothing.
With this baby, I assume it will be the same situation. I will try and work from home during those weeks when I can. I will also be returning at 10w, but dd2 will come with me (in a sling) until she's 12 weeks and the nanny can take her. It's not ideal, but the timing makes it to where it is vital I return at 10 weeks to get some big events off the ground (with a newborn on my chest). It sucks, but honestly... It kind of makes me feel like a badass.
Eta: DH's work just started a policy where he gets 8 weeks (paid at 100%) paternity leave - amazing!! I'm so excited!
I am currently not a full time employee so I am not eligible for any leave. But, last time the first week was PTO, then 8 with STD at 66%. I took 14 weeks but got my STD extended because I broke my arm at 9 weeks post partum.
I actually still haven't quite figured out our maternity leave policy (I should do that). But pretty sure I'll be unpaid the whole time. There's a possibility I may actually end up having to pay money while I'm out. I'll probably only be able to take 6 weeks.
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