UW-Madison and the Universities of Wisconsin are each proposing a paid parental leave policy granting six weeks of leave for the birth or adoption of a child, following more than a decade of studying its feasibility and increasing pressure from faculty and staff.
Once in effect, the paid parental leave policies will provide a structure for parents who need to take time off, rather than the patchwork of current policies that often require employees to burn through vacation and sick days, risk lost wages or jeopardize graduate work appointments when growing their families.
UW-Madison’s policy grants six weeks of paid parental leave in a 12-month period to faculty and staff, as well as to graduate workers who are lecturers or who are teaching, research and project assistants. The UW system’s policy would make all non-temporary staff eligible for paid parental leave after six consecutive months of employment.
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Both policies would take effect July 1. Slight differences between UW-Madison and UW system human resources make the two virtually identical policies necessary.
UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin said Monday that adding paid parental leave allows the university to stay competitive in recruiting graduate students and employees, and catch up to other local private businesses and governmental agencies that already offer it.
“It’s not actually going to be a very expensive policy for the institution, but we think it will support the wellbeing and success of our faculty, staff and students,” Mnookin said. “When I saw the relatively minimal expenditure, compared to the very important benefit, it just seemed like a clear thing to push forward.”
Neither UW-Madison nor UW system’s policies will apply to temporary employees or hourly student employees, who are often working jobs in areas such as student unions, dining facilities or residence halls.
The UW Board of Regents will consider the policies at its meeting scheduled for Thursday and Friday at UW-Platteville. Personnel policies such as paid parental leave require a review from the Regents but not a vote.
UW-Madison’s paid parental leave policy is expected to cost about $500,000 to cover about 875 employees a year, roughly 0.02% of UW-Madison’s entire $2.6 billion budget for wages and fringe benefits, Mnookin said. In effect for the other UW schools, the UW system policy is expected to cost about $229,500 a year for an estimated 650 employees.
Current policies
The UW system currently requires employees to use sick or vacation days for up to six weeks of paid time off or take an unpaid absence. An employee who wants to take more than six weeks must use unpaid time off.
In 2013, UW-Madison asked a faculty commission for recommendations and, in 2016, UW-Madison and the UW system jointly funded a study to examine worker wages and benefits for the first time in three decades.
Most other universities similar in size to UW-Madison offer paid parental leave to their faculty, staff and graduate student workers. A committee that studied the feasibility of paid parental leave in 2022 found that among UW-Madison’s peers, 90% of them provided paid parental leave to faculty and staff who become parents through birth or adoption. About half of UW-Madison’s peer schools also provided paid leave for faculty and staff undergoing a foster child placement.
Most peer schools also provide an average of five weeks of paid parental leave for graduate and postdoctoral birth parents. Under current UW-Madison policies, graduate assistants risk losing their health insurance or their teaching, research or project assistant appointments if they take unpaid leave following the birth of a child because they aren’t protected by the Federal Medical Leave Act.
UW-Madison’s current policy states that students have the right to take a four-week unpaid leave, but other forms of paid leave depend on the graduate assistant’s program. For example, in 2008 the chemistry department approved six weeks of paid leave for graduate assistants to reduce academic and financial hardships, and in 2017, the College of Engineering said it intended to offer paid family leave for faculty and graduate assistants.
In the ad-hoc committee’s June 2022 report, the committee found multiple areas of inequity across UW-Madison leave policies, such as employees being allocated different amounts of sick or vacation hours based on their title or appointment, or the possibility of supervisors committing Title IX violations if they attempt to shorten or prevent unpaid leave.
Increasing pressure
In his proposed budget last year, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers renewed the push for paid parental leave by proposing 12 weeks of paid leave for eligible public- and private-sector workers, including UW system employees. The state’s Republican-led budget-writing committee, however, stripped that provision from the budget.
Pressure from faculty, staff and graduate students has been increasing in recent years. Last month, dozens of UW-Madison department chairs and hundreds of others signed on to a letter organized by the United Faculty and Staff union urging Mnookin for a policy to guarantee 12 weeks of paid leave.
Michael Bernard-Donals, president of PROFS, an organization that lobbies on behalf of UW-Madison faculty, said they had supported Evers’ paid family leave proposal and would like to see that codified in state legislation. UW-Madison’s new policy is a “great development,” he added.
“The benefit that this (policy) will have is going to be huge, in the sense that in the past, employees have had to cull together leave — which has not been paid — out of sick leave. And when you have a child or adopt a child, we’re not sick, it’s a life transition for everybody in the family,” Bernard-Donals said. “This will allow parents to have the time they need to bond with their children and to do the things that they need to do to cohere as a family.”
In a statement Monday, TAA, the graduate student union for UW-Madison, said while the union is encouraged by the paid parental leave policy, there’s more work to be done.
“This policy excludes all other graduate assistant classifications and only provides paid parental leave, meaning that this leave cannot be used for chronic illness or other reasons,” the statement said. “We are confident that our paid leave petition, which has garnered over 700 signatures, and our recent Valentine’s Day paid leave rally helped amplify this issue and we will continue to fight for a comprehensive, 12-week paid family and medical leave for all graduate students.”