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.
Clarissa's Blog 
I wonder what the percentage is of babies actually born on due dates. It’s a bit risky fixing a policy on such an arbitrary date. Both mine were born two and a half weeks early. Babies don’t take much notice of due dates, so HR shouldn’t either.
Maternity should start when the mother goes into labour at the very least (in a philistine society which makes pregnant women work right up to the last moment)!
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“I wonder what the percentage is of babies actually born on due dates. It’s a bit risky fixing a policy on such an arbitrary date.”
– Exactly! And besides, the exertion of working at this stage of the pregnancy can actually make her go into labor prematurely. I was born 3 weeks earlier than the due date because my mother over-exerted herself.
What I don’t understand is why it is so hard to let women decide how they want to spread out their 12 weeks. When will we start trusting women to make these decisions for themselves? This will entail absolutely no financial burden for the employer.
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Here in Québec, if the due date has some chance to be during the winter/fall semester, this would become an automatic sabbatical.
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Really?? OK, I’m emigrating back to Quebec.
No, not yet. 🙂
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I’m not sure this is an “all-paid” sabbatical, but this is at least a partly paid (probably 75%) sabbatical.
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This should really be a case-by-case decision (regarding maternity leave). For my first kid, I wasn’t working, so I didn’t have a maternity leave issue. For my second kid, I simply told the university that I couldn’t teach in the spring semester. (I was an adjunct.) I worked until December 17th, turned in my grades, and had my second baby on December 19th.
Since I was only part-time, I had the flexibility to choose what I was going to do. If I were full-time at the time, I would have been a lot more stressed out about how things were going to be handled. I have a colleague who is pregnant and due any day. I don’t understand why she should be expected to come back to work for the last two weeks of the semester after her baby is born. But that’s the plan.
In my opinion, the really humane thing would be to give the semester off to the person who’s having a baby.
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“I have a colleague who is pregnant and due any day. I don’t understand why she should be expected to come back to work for the last two weeks of the semester after her baby is born. But that’s the plan.”
– Exactly!
“In my opinion, the really humane thing would be to give the semester off to the person who’s having a baby.”
– Humane, reasonable, and productive. The students really don’t gain anything from having a hugely pregnant person whose water might break at any time in the classroom.
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Actually, I just found out today that the situation is worse than I feared! My colleague who is pregnant plans to take only two weeks off and then come back for the last six weeks of the semester. It is so wrong, so barbaric. It’s her first child, too, so she doesn’t know what to expect. I think that with second (or subsequent) children it would be easier to have a shorter time off because you do know what to expect. But that said, you should still get plenty of bonding time with your kid, no matter if it’s your first or 31st. (Heaven forbid anyone should have that many children, but you never know about heaven these days…) 😉
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Some people have really phenomenal health. Just even simply for health reasons, I can’t imagine working 2 weeks after giving birth.
Also, psychologically, leaving the baby for such significant stretches of time before 6 weeks must be brutal for everybody involved. I’m not judging anybody, God forbid, but I wouldn’t commit these acts of heroism unless something really enormous were at stake.
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This woman is in her first year on the job in a TT position, got pregnant unexpectedly, and basically feels like she’s inconveniencing everyone. It’s sad that she feels like that. I worry that it will color her relationship with her baby.
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No, relationships form according to a different logic. My father wasn’t there at all in the first months of my life while my mother was. But my relationship with him was always beautiful and with my mother. . . not so much.
The real danger is that with this kind of professional persona she will arrive at the tenure committee with a million service obligations and nothing else. And will not get tenure as a result.
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Your 2013 fall should be a sabbatical.
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I only get a right to a sabbatical after tenure. An actual sabbatical requires a huge research agenda. I don;t expect to be able to do much research at that time. Just realistically, I don’t see it.
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At least, you should not be obligated to give any lectures at all this fall and delaying your tenure process should be an available option. The converse would be unthinkable here in Québec.
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“and delaying your tenure process should be an available option”
– God forbid!! Why should I be punished for reproducing with getting tenure later?
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This is an option.
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At Laval, it’s 2 semesters of 75% paid leave.
Even the father have a right to a 1-semester 50% leave.
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“Even the father have a right to a 1-semester 50% leave.”
– Please, don’t pour salt on my wounds. In the US, there is zero respect for fatherhood. But since the fathers don;t even try to fight for their rights, that’s what they get.
I’m shocked at how passive and brainwashed the US men are.
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You union should receive a lot of ass-kicking.
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Your union should receive a lot of ass-kicking.
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We don’t have a union. The HR workers do. 😦
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So teachers should not complain.
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It is impossible to unionize people in my profession. Everything we do is very merit-based, and the union doesn’t allow that.
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All university teachers are unionized in Québec and there is a tenure track process. Thus it’s possible.
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I know, I was talking more about our specific union that has unionized our instructors, adjuncts, part-time faculty and staff.
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I am on a unionized faculty. The union has managed quite well to incorporate the primary role of merit into its operations and negotiations. Our union does indeed sometimes stop arbitrary and capricious acts by the administration or HR department.
It used to do even more of this than it does now. I don’t know whether the administration has learned what it cannot get away with, and no longer bothers trying, or whether the weak economy makes professors more fearful of aggressively pursuing grievances. Or maybe the union has become less responsive. I just do not know.
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Maternity leave at my firm is only paid to the extent that you have paid-time-off days left. After that, you’re allowed to use your long-term illness benefit, the only benefit being that you can take several weeks off without being fired. There is no pay for the long-term illness time off.
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“Maternity leave at my firm is only paid to the extent that you have paid-time-off days left. After that, you’re allowed to use your long-term illness benefit, the only benefit being that you can take several weeks off without being fired.”
– I’m sorry to have to say this but this is barbaric. It just is. So much talk everywhere about family values, and this is the result?
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Form a union.
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Form an union.
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Even outside the union thing, if anybody is serious about the quality of education, if the due date has some chance to be during the winter/fall semester, there should be a maternity leave without any lecture for this semester.
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I think you are absolutely right.
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