Are these paid or unpaid paternity leaves?
My son-in-law, a lawyer in a very large NYC law firm worked from home for a month after my D gave birth to twins. He did not take any paternity leave which I am sure he’s entitled to some time off.
I have always been at corporation where there are many different levels of professionals, and we always have same benefits for everyone. I know it was illegal to offer certain insurance to higher paying executives and not to others.
No you can’t have different benefits but you can have retirement plan specifically for higher compensated employees.
So how does a law firm have different maternity benefits for employees?
You absolutely can have different benefits. I’ve never seen a firm that didn’t have different benefits for attorneys and non lawyers, and I’ve hired in similar firms for almost 30 years. Lawyers here get six months and unlimited sick days. Exempt staff gets unlimited sick and 9 weeks of leave. Non-exempt staff gets 8 sick days and 9 weeks of leave. Lawyers get different bonus scales. It is emphatically not true that companies have to give the same benefits. They don’t. They just have to communicate what the benefits are for each class.
Once again, thank you for the thoughtful and helpful comments. Among other things, I agree that the details of my coworker’s paternity leave, other than its estimated length, are none of my business; and that the distribution of his work in his absence is as much an issue for our department’s managers (three in a small department) as it is for the coworker. I want to support my coworker in his desire to spend the time he wants and needs being an at-home father but I don’t want to bear an uneven share of covering his projects. I plan to talk to my immediate manager and explain my concerns about the workload issue and encourage her to consider creative approaches for making sure everyone’s needs are met.
I agree that most large law firms have radically different maternity leave policies for attorneys (i.e. Partners, associates and counsel) than for staff (managers, staff attorneys, paralegals, secretaries and the like).
But the 4 or 5 months in paid leave that attorneys often get at large law firms for maternity leave isn’t REALLY 4 or 5 months of paid leave because such a huge portion of compensation is in bonuses or, for partners, discretionary share of the profits.
A partner may get her draw and an associate may get her base salary but she is not going to get bonuses or the same percentage share in the profits as she would if she were working full time.
I just did some research (googling), apparently it is not illegal to have different benefits, but some states may not permit it. I have just never worked at any company where there are different time off policies for different class of employees, it is always based on years of service, full time vs part time.
Well you just work in a different industry, oldfort. Law firms are hierarchical in the extreme and always have been.
Nottelling, you are absolutely right about bonuses. Many associates time maternity leaves around bonus schedules whenever possible, and all time departures around bonuses. One other small thing is that the six months of leave for lawyers includes continuation of health benefits and job security during that time. Non-lawyers only have that protection for whatever time they are given (my prior firm gave 6 weeks, and the firm before that paid zero), so if someone isn’t ready to come back at the appointed time, their health benefits cease and they aren’t guaranteed their job back.
When I was pregnant with D1 I changed my employment. The new employer’s health insurance didn’t cover pre-existing condition (pregnancy), so they paid for my cobra. I think the pregnancy was considered as a disability, so I was only eligible for short term disability. My new employer ended up paying me for 3 months of maternity leave by not recording my leave. Back then there was no computer or emails (I feel old), so they had couriers deliver inter office mails to me twice a day while I was out.
It’s interesting to hear peoples’ opinions on parental leave. In Canada/Ontario, we’ve had this for many years, at least as far back as when I had my first and she’s now 35! The benefits and policies have increased through the years and now parents are entitled to one year, and are paid a certain percentage of their salary through government employment insurance programs. Many employers top that up so that it is at full pay. Most employers also have the same benefit for paternity leave as mat leave. Jobs in the same position must be kept available for one year. Some take longer than that. My daughter who is a teacher took 18 months, although only the first year was paid.
Usually what happens these days is that the mom and dad share the one year leave. My D and her H who are both lawyers have many friends who are at large firms and who have done that. They will take advantage of it later this year, as both of their firms allow for it. When Canadians hear the very limited parental leave available to many in the U.S., it does boggle our minds, I admit.
DH took two weeks of paternity leave at the law firm when S1 was born. It was a new benefit and he was the first. He had been an associate for a little under two months. Reality was that he did some work and went in once or twice.
One of S1’s colleagues (SV company) was on disability leave this summer and he also had to sign an agreement rhat he couldn’t do any work. No emails, calls, etc. S went over to visit him at home a few times. The colleague was a bit stir crazy!
That policy sounds insane. As lovely as it might be for the parents, how difficult that must be for a smaller company, particularly for ones with highly trained employees that can’t be easily replaced. Who would hire a pregnant woman, or a man with a pregnant wife? Or a married person of child bearing age? A person could work for a couple of months, declare their pregnancy and take a year off. Come back for a couple of months and do the same thing. What small company could absorb that sort of loss? If I took a year off, it would take over a month and tens of thousands of dollars to retrain me. That sounds like it could put companies with a smaller profit margins out of business.
If they are paid through a “government employment insurance program” than it wouldn’t cost the small business much money. They aren’t required to raise the money to full salary. They have to make the job available after the year of leave, so they need to hire a temp, which is not ideal but not the end of the world.
Also, I’m not sure how it works in Canada but in the US many worker’s rights benefits simply don’t apply to employers who employ less than 50 people. FMLA doesn’t apply to small employers.
In large law firms that give market pay, first year attorney’s base salary is $180K. 6 months’ leave gets you $90K. I wouldn’t call that chump change. 2016 bonus for 1st year is $15K so it’s not proportionately as huge as you think.
Over the last decade or two, I have ended up interacting (in an official capacity ) with quite a few new to the workforce employees. Many do not know protocol an older employee would take for granted. These include everything from personal cell phone use to vacation requests to plans for coverage during an absence to what to do with a meeting invitation to how to answer a phone!
If you’re responsible in some way, you need to teach. Nicely, and with an explanation.
If you’re affected, as OP is in the case of an absence, you definitely need to ask what plans have been made. If none, suggest that the team meet, with the person who will be leaving, to develop a plan. Be prepared to suggest hiring a temp, deferring a deadline, or other accommodations that will allow this to work.
It’s important that employees have leave for ALL family needs, not just births, so employers and coworkers need to have systems in place that make that possible. That starts with employees having a little extra bandwidth to pick up an overload if it occurs. And yes, it also involves following policy!
But if an employer has many locations, some with only a few people, it can still cost the employer a lot. I worked at the home office (1000 employees) so if a secretary was gone or an accounting clerk, it wasn’t a drain o the employer. We had 9000 employees in branches with anywhere from 4 to 50 people in the branch. What we did for the cashier’s position was to have the supervisor sit in that office for a vacation week or medical leave. Supervisors usually had 8-10 offices in a state, so to stay at an office in a little town was a strain on the supervisor and her (always a her) family. She had to stay in a hotel, eat, travel, all at company expense. If it was a manager or salesman who was gone, usually the others in the office did the extra work.
I’m not saying the employers shouldn’t give maternity leave or follow the FMLA, but doing so is not a free event, even if the maternity leave is not paid. The company was generous in some ways. During Desert Storm, we paid all our employees called to service (and there were a lot of them, probably more than were on maternity leave) their full pay.
But a temp cannot be hired for every job. Maybe not the end of the world, but potentially very costly to hire and train someone who will soon leave for a year. I wonder how many people could just step back into their jobs with the same skill and proficiency after a year of not doing it, without a significant downgrade in ability or massive training. It seems to be a huge burden on a company, and I wonder if people feel that they are passed over for employment for others because of that.
I wouldn’t call that chump change either, plus, I can’t imagine anyone would expect a bonus for not doing any work.