First of all, thank you to the many people who contacted me about family leave benefits. I talked to HR again today and felt a bit more optimistic about things. The FMLA says that I can take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave from my job and keep my benefits, and my understanding is that this is in addition to the paid time off and disability leave I can take. I have to admit that I kind of laid it on thick in talking to the HR woman about how our baby is going to have to undergo multiple open heart surgeries in his first months of life, but hey, I think I'm entitled, and after that, I think she did seem more sympathetic and is really trying to help us out now.
Not much else of note happened today, although I did get a phone message saying that I was to call a certain phone number to set up an appointment with a Dr. Moore in pediatric cardiology at UCSF. I had never heard of this Dr. Moore, but I dutifully called the number back to set up an appointment, but then the person I spoke to didn't know what kind of appointment I was supposed to be setting up or when, and of course, I didn't know either, so hopefully they'll call back tomorrow. After that conversation, I looked him up online and it turns out he's the director of the pediatric cardiac catheterization lab at UCSF. Cardiac catheterization is a type of less-invasive heart surgery that can be used to look inside the heart, and sometimes to open up blockages in the heart, in addition to various other things. Our little guy will be undergoing several of these in addition to his open-heart surgeries, but my understanding is that the first won't be until he is at least a few months old, so I'm not exactly sure why they want to see me now, but I'm not complaining...I am very anxious to meet all of the people who will be involved in treating our son as soon as I can.
The latest...
8 years ago
My college runs FMLA concurrently with maternity leave, and I think that is pretty common. I don't know whether that is just the way FMLA works, or how much wiggle room individual employers have, so (as I'm sure you are) just double-check the policies. It sucks that you have to worry about coverage and time off on top of everything else.
ReplyDeleteThat's the way it is here, too, but yeah, I'm hoping they will be/can be somewhat flexible with this.
ReplyDeleteJen, I'm not sure if your HR lady mentioned Paid Family Leave to you as well, but that allows for partial pay to take time off to care for a sick family member, and that can run after your maternity leave. Iggy should be able to use it too, since it is administered by the EDD not an employer. Most of my friends have done the six weeks maternity leave, then six weeks PFL to get a total of 12 weeks off before having to use FMLA. This is a decent website about it: http://www.paidfamilyleave.org/
ReplyDeleteJen, ask about CFRA, too. It's another 12 weeks of unpaid leave with job security for bonding with a new child, but I don't know how it affects benefits. It may be the same as when UC stops paying its portion of your benefits while on FMLA and you have to foot the entire bill. For me, this worked out to be about $900/month for medical, dental, and vision for me and medical for Lily. It's steep, especially when you factor in the unpaid part of unpaid leave, but at least your coverage continues. I know I've said this many many times, but double-check and re-confirm everything HR and benefits tells you, because they often get things wrong or don't truly understand the whole process.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Melinda and Felisa. I will ask HR about those things, but I have a sneaking suspicion that Paid Family Leave is the same thing as short-term disability, since the provisions are exactly the same, and I found a UC Berkeley website saying that CFRA and FMLA are taken concurrently. It's pretty frustrating that while all these programs exist, none of them seem to be additive! Also, I'm pretty sure Iggy isn't eligible for Paid Family Leave, because he's really more of an independent contractor than an employee, and his employer doesn't pay in to the state disability program.
ReplyDeleteI have to dig up the brochures I have re: pregnancy, disability, and benefits, but I remember that FMLA and CFRA can overlap, but aren't meant to run entirely concurrently. The thing I just found on AtYourService says that CFRA begins after disability ends because it's for bonding or care (for yourself or a family member) unrelated to pregnancy disability.
ReplyDeleteI'm still confused by the whole thing, what with multiple types and sources of disability benefits. Ideally, if you could get an HR person, a payroll person, and a benefits person to all sit down with you at the same time to go over all the options, that would be amazing. Unlikely, I suppose, but amazing. Maybe they would considering your situation?