The writer is a statewide delegate and co-chair of the Women’s Rights and Concerns Committee of United University Professions (UUP), which is the faculty union of the State University of New York (SUNY).
In any international survey of family benefits for workers―including paid maternity and paternity leave, child care benefits and emergency leave to care for other family members―U.S. workers come in last. The European Union has recently standardized its benefits for member nations, and even many developing countries have mandated benefits for childbirth, adoption, and leave for elder care and family emergencies.
Among the reasons the United States scores so low in the area of family benefits is the lack of federal legislation that
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U.S. workers do have the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), passed in 1993, that provides 12 weeks of unpaid leave for birth, adoption, elder care and care of a sick relative. This act guarantees job security and continuation of employer-sponsored health benefits and applies to all workplaces of 50 or more employees. New York state employees, without regard to gender, are entitled to childcare leave without pay for up to seven months from the date of delivery. The SUNY system has no separate benefit for family leave beyond the state and federal unpaid leaves.
While family-friendly policies benefit both men and women, female employees are the most likely to be hurt by the lack of paid leave and other family benefits.
A major study undertaken by a research team at the University of California at Berkeley showed that women in academia had particular disadvantages because of the structure and culture of the academic environment. The six or seven years when a junior faculty member works toward tenure are also the optimal years for having children. Conferences and field work away from home put additional strain on faculty with caregiving responsibilities.
The Berkeley study found that women, more than men, had to “choose between work and family.” Looking at just one factor in the study, tenure, women with children were less likely to achieve tenure than women without children, men without children and men with children. And women with tenure were more than twice as likely to remain single and childless as men with tenure, or had fewer children than they wanted in order to maintain their careers.
The Berkeley study recommended such practices as one semester relief from teaching for new parents; suspension of the tenure clock for parents with children under five; unpaid family leave for up to one year for any family care; a centralized fund for replacement faculty for employees on leave; accessible and affordable child care; training on family issues for department heads and deans; and an outreach brochure for prospective and current faculty describing the institution’s family-friendly package.
United University Professions is undertaking a major push to get New York state to make SUNY a more family friendly workplace. The union has established a statewide family leave committee that is working for paid leaves for birth, adoption, elder care, and care of sick relatives and domestic partners.
At the fall 2006 Delegate Assembly, the union devoted the Friday afternoon session to a forum on family leave; featured Dr. Vicky Lovell of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, an expert on family leave, as the Assembly’s keynote speaker; and produced literature on work/family balance for all campuses.
In addition, UUP is conducting a statewide salary inequity and family leave study to assess the needs of members on all types of campuses and make recommendations for policies that will improve the work/family balance for members.
Finally, UUP is supporting legislation (the Families in the Workplace Act: S1501B and A1301a) for private sector employees, which could be a step toward paid family leave for both private and public sector workers in New York State.
If New York does agree to grant paid family leave for SUNY workers, it won’t be the first state to do so for state university employees. The state university systems of Pennsylvania, Washington, Ohio, Massachusetts, Michigan and California already grant paid leaves of from one month to one semester for childbirth, adoption and other family needs.
The issue is also on the radar of major think tanks and researchers. For example, the Sloan foundation recently awarded grants to six universities in a program to help make faculty jobs more flexible and enable employees to meet the demands of family life without damaging their careers. The foundation chose universities that had already taken steps to implement family friendly policies. Winners are Duke, Lehigh, and the Universities of Florida and Washington ($250,000 each), and the Universities of California at Berkeley and at Davis (sharing a $250,000 grant).
Here at New Paltz, the UUP’s Women’s Rights and Concerns Committee has been researching the issue of work/family balance in a series of surveys and forums for three years. The committee found that New Paltz academic and professional faculty are frustrated with the low level of family benefits, the inconsistent information they receive about what benefits they are entitled to, and the need to negotiate privately with their deans or supervisors to get needed time off.
These workers are also frustrated by the lack of resources within departments to pay for temporary help while a colleague is on leave, resulting in department members having to increase their workload to compensate for the work not being done by the absent colleague.
The Committee has drafted a proposal for a family leave policy that has helped to inform UUP’s efforts to promote better work/family balance. Underlying this effort is a combination of social values and economic benefits. Among the social values are the beliefs that caring for others is a social good; a uniform policy will promote fairness and equality of opportunity; and children are our social wealth and a social responsibility.
A uniform family benefits policy would also bring economic benefits and efficiency to the workplace. Departments could plan in advance for faculty on leave; supervisors would not be in the position to grant or withhold leaves on a case by case basis; and with a fund for temporary help to replace absent colleagues, remaining department members would not have to take on someone else’s job in addition to their own.
The proposed policy calls for paid leave, flexible work schedules, job security, adjustments in the tenure/permanent appointment clock, and no interruptions in benefits. These benefits would apply to birth or adoption of a child and care of a spouse, partner or other family member suffering from a serious medical condition. Other family conscious practices would include bereavement leave, child care for all shifts, private space for breastfeeding, coordinating snow days with local public schools, publishing a resource guide for employees and families, and uniform benefits among all schools and departments.
As the work week expands and “workload creep” finds its way into daily conversation, finding a balance between work and family life becomes increasingly critical. Paid family leave is not on the national legislative agenda of either of the major political parties.
That’s why grass roots efforts such as UUP’s are so important―to educate our own members, to influence legislators at the local and state level, and to help spread the word to other universities and states.
Just as UUP is advocating for private sector benefits in the hope that these benefits will expand to state workers, benefits gained by SUNY workers can set the stage for similar benefits for other states and other universities.
