When Jennifer Erickson, an anthropology professor, had her baby in February 2012, she had to handle being a new mom on top of working part-time at Ball State.
She organized all of her classes and found people to lecture as a guest for 22 class periods in two different courses.
“I was working during that time, which you’re not supposed to have to do during sick leave,” Erickson said. “Then I came back at the end of the semester, which was really difficult for both me and the students who had me during that semester because there was very little continuity in the semester for any of us.”
Her graduate assistant helped her out in one of her classes, fielding email questions and helping during class.
“I was supposed to be on leave, but I didn’t want to let the students down,” Erickson said.
She had saved up six weeks of sick leave, and was able to take six paid weeks off to stay with her baby.
But most Americans aren’t so lucky. The U.S. doesn’t mandate a paid family leave program, so companies have to choose to offer a paid plan.
“This is not just Ball State, this is the United States of America,” Erickson said. “This is how working mothers are treated in the U.S. It’s [an] epidemic how working, professional women are not given the space to have a child professionally.”
The Ball State family medical leave plan currently offers up to 12 weeks per year of unpaid, protected leave for family or medical reasons, which is what is required for employers to provide under the Family Medical Leave Act of 1993.
Those 12 weeks can be taken for the birth or care of a newborn child of the employee, after adoption or foster placement, to care for an immediate family member with a serious health condition, or when the employee isn’t able to work because of a serious health condition.
But for many faculty, like Erickson, it just wouldn’t be possible to take six weeks off without pay.
That’s why last year, Ellen Thorington, an associate French professor, helped to draft a proposal for a new family leave policy.
The proposal recommended 12 weeks of paid family leave for employees to care for a newborn, or after an adoption, or to care for an immediate family member who was sick.
Thorington said one of the things they noticed while they were drafting the proposal was that maternity leave wasn’t separated from sick leave. So for any faculty with lower amounts of sick leave, it would be hard to be able to stay home and care for their child after birth.
“Ball State is doing better than a lot of places, but ... if [faculty] are coming in and have 12 sick days, that covers two and a half weeks. If you have any complications or have a C-Section or need eight weeks, you are basically on unpaid leave with the FMLA,” Thorington said.
The U.S is one of four countries, including Lesotho, Swaziland and Papua New Guinea, that doesn’t offer a paid family leave plan, according to the International Labor Organization.
Only 11 percent of private industry workers and 16 percent of state and local government employees have access to paid family leave. Federal employees don’t get any, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“Everybody in their life encounters this kind of issue, and there’s no getting around it, because it’s life,” Thorington said. “We want to suggest a policy that covers the most people in the best way that we can in situations that are very difficult, like illness, birth or adoption. Any member of the faculty may need to take time that isn’t provided for under current plan. People run out of sick leave days. Maternity leave isn’t really a sickness, and it’s being treated as one.”
However, the proposal was rejected by the university because it would be too expensive, costing an estimated $571,000 per year.
In December 2012, the university did an employee benefits survey to give employees an opportunity to express which benefits they would like to see.
Only five percent of the employees surveyed ranked a more generous family leave policy as their most important benefit, said Marie Williams, associate vice president for human resources and administrative services.
Williams said because only .009 percent of the 1,874 faculty who are eligible for benefits statistically used the program, it was too costly to implement the program when it wasn’t supported by the survey results.
“We understand the importance of these types of benefits for our employees and we will continue to monitor such for future consideration when we conduct a follow-up employee campus-wide benefit survey,” Williams said.
The benefits survey also showed 36 percent of employees preferred to put funds towards providing better medical benefits and 28 percent said they would want to put it toward pension and retirement plans, Williams said.
Erickson said because maternity leave isn’t mandated in the U.S., many people don’t even think of it as an option they have.
“A lot of people ... don’t know they’re going to need it until it happens,” Erickson said.
However, some universities and companies have made the switch to a paid family leave policy. One of those is Indiana University Bloomington, whose policy Ball State's proposal was based on.
The IU policy allows faculty to take paid family leave twice every five years. Faculty can take necessary time off without struggling financially, according to the policy.
The policy also says there is no expectation to work while on leave, since the point is to relieve them of duties so they can deal with their family need.
Susan McCammon, assistant vice provost and director of academic personnel policies and services, said while the policy wasn’t heavily relied on, it definitely was used.
“I think it gives them that peace of mind, it provides that balance of work life and family,” McCammon said.
She said having that policy has been helpful for them in recruiting, and is something attractive to the junior faculty who had possibly postponed starting a family until they got tenure.
“IU Bloomington has worked hard to find that balance between family and work and I think that the result, I think it comes back around tenfold,” McCammon said. “Happy employees are certainly more inclined to stay, and probably [leads to] a higher retention rate.”
In 2007, Google increased their paid maternity leave from 12 to 18 weeks, and the rate at which new mothers left the company decreased by 50 percent, according to an op-ed written by Susan Wojcicki, the CEO of YouTube, published in the Wall Street Journal.
“Mothers were able to take the time they needed to bond with their babies and return to their jobs feeling confident and ready,” she said in the article. “And it’s much better for Google’s bottom line - to avoid costly turnover, and to retain the valued expertise, skills and perspective of our employees who are mothers.”
And this is not only true for Google. California started to require paid family leave in 2002.
Nine years later in 2011, the Center for Economic and Policy Research found 89 percent of employers said PLF had either a “positive effect” or “no noticeable effect” on productivity, 91 percent for profitability and performance, 96 percent for turnover and 99 percent for employee morale.
And during this legislative session, President Obama is trying to get guaranteed paid leave for workers with the Healthy Families Act, which was first endorsed in 2009 and the White House announced it’s support for again last fall.
He proposed a $50 million state paid leave fund that will provide grants to help cover start-up costs for states choosing to start a paid family leave program, according to whitehouse.gov.
Erickson said until there is a law mandating paid family leave, she doesn’t think there will be any change.
“The important thing is that it’s not just the university,” she said. “I think this is a larger, cultural problem in the US and it’s important to think about that.”
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