you say you want a revolution (paid family leave)

I’m thinking about going to the mattresses.

Like most of us, I work at a place that very often institutes policies and programs which I find extremely problematic. Part of this is simply living in a capitalist system where upper level administrators get paid six times what housekeepers make. Part of it is that we have federal policies in place that make it seem like what we’re doing is just like everybody else and is therefore okay.

So you have to pick your battles. One that I am contemplating is family leave policy.

Here’s the scoop. Federal law requires employers to provide 12 weeks of unpaid leave to their employees. The key word here is unpaid. The university where I work abides by this policy except that you are allowed to cobble together sick leave and vacation to get paid after you have a baby.

Unfortunately there’s a double standard. Typically, although not a written policy, faculty members (I’m not sure if male and female) receive a full semester (3 months) of fully paid leave. Plus faculty already get summers off and the university breaks when class is not in session. Staff have neither of these things. For me, when The Babe is born, if I took my cobbled maternity leave all at one time, our kid would be in child care at 8 weeks. As it is now, Jacob will work from home one day a week, me for two and I’ll use one “sick day” a week for a semester. I’ll get three weeks off before I head back to the office.

As you can imagine, I have problems with this. First, the staff policy means I can never get sick because my goal is to bank my days. Should I get cancer, have a really sick family member, I am screwed. And since vacation doesn’t roll over year to year, I get only those two weeks per year on top of whatever I can save up on sick leave. Also, too bad if you have an unplanned pregnancy or two kids close together. Since I’ve already used up my banked time, my child can never get sick because I won’t have any more days I can take off of work.

The real absurdity is the very idea of unpaid leave, particularly for people earning low income with multi-generational family commitments. We might make it work for my family (barely), but what about housekeeping, food services or physical plant workers. I am guessing many of those families couldn’t survive on one income for three full months.

Here’s the rub: my school’s policy is considered generous. This is the norm at most places and they mark this as “paid leave.” I feel like it’s going to be hard to express to my administration how barbaric this policy really is when they’re considered the best that we get in the US (most other Western countries provide one to two full years of paid family leave).

The most damning part of all is that only 4 or 5 women at my school get pregnant every year. Covering their salaries I would guess would cost approximately one half of one percent of two, maybe three upper-level administrators yearly salaries. Think I can talk someone into voluntarily contributing to the fund?

So what do you think? And what the heck do I do? What’s my case? How do I garner support?

Do any of you have experience with this in your own work places? Am I being ridiculous to try and fight against this when it is the gold standard? What’s the general experience of family leave our there?