It is really really wonderful to work with human, kind, understanding people whose first impulse is to stand in solidarity with their colleagues. I have seen academic departments that are a vipers’ nest of petty competitions, dislikes, feuds, and general nastiness, so it’s amazing to work with a group that is always on your side and where nobody looks for ways to push you out of the way.
In my specific situation, I’m envisioning a fight with the HR department. My colleague “Emilia” is going through that fight right now. The HR department – that consists 100% of women, mind you – has been so nasty to Emilia in her last weeks of pregnancy that she almost had a nervous breakdown. You really need to be a piece of work to badger a woman who is due to give birth in two weeks.
The HR department is taking the position that one’s maternity leave should start on one’s due date. They don’t seem to be able to process the information that one might go into labor a little earlier than scheduled. Mind you, the maternity leave is of the same duration for everybody (6 weeks paid, 6 weeks unpaid). What is the problem with somebody starting it a little earlier and ending it a little earlier, too, if that does not change the actual number of days one is out of work? Financially, neither the department nor the university lose anything by accommodating the pregnant colleague in this way. And the students only win because even the best pedagogue in the universe will not be able to teach all that well the day before she is due.
You’ll say that the HR people have to follow regulations and don’t have a choice. I get that, of course, but would it kill them to be a little kinder when talking to a pregnant employee? There is a huge difference between saying, “Look, I know these regulations are stupid, I’m really on your side here. Let’s see if we can figure something out” (and actually there is a very easy, completely legal way of resolving this issue) and rolling your eyes, puffing and huffing in annoyance, and refusing to discuss anything in a nasty tone.
“Imagine the Murmansk Area,” the Chair said to me, “February. Sometime during the XVIIth century. That is what the HR department is, climatically and ideologically.”
If we didn’t have solidarity within the department, it would have been very easy for these bureaucrats to undermine us one by one. They have nothing much to do with their amply remunerated time, so they have fun torturing people. (Emilia is SO not the only person they have been persecuting. Retirement age colleagues are their favorite targets.)
P.S. I also have to say that the Chair, a 60-year-old Hispanic male, has been dramatically more understanding and normal towards the issues of pregnant co-workers than 30 and 40-year-old American women. Just saying.
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