Since this is baby #2, I thought I would share my wisdom with regards to Maternity Leave in California. I find a lot of sites have various forms of mis-information. Of course, I'm neither your HR department nor am I a lawyer, so take this with a grain of salt as well.
I'm going to classify the leave in two different ways: Time Away from Work, and How you get Paid. In CA, and in federal statues, there are different pieces of legislation which influence how you get away from work/time off and how you can get paid while you're off.
Time Away from Work:
1. Pregnancy Disability Leave (PDL): This is a stautue of CA law, and available only in the state of California to residents. It covers 4 months (recently defined as 17 1/3 weeks) of leave for diasbility. I start with it, because it's the one that covers almost everyone. It covers you regardless of the amount of time you've worked for your employer (started yesterday? No problem!). Regardless of the number of hours or years. Your employer only needs to have a minimum of 5 employees, so it covers a lot more people than FMLA.
This leave must be medically necessary. It's called disability leave for a reason, which means that you have to have a doctors note and can be asked to get a certified note. Additionally it is available as intermittent leave. You could use it to go to the dr, do tests, etc. The bill also says that disability can come from gestational diabetes, or other conditions of pregnancy. If you only work 50% time, that means you'd be entitled to 34 2/3 weeks of leave, etc.
To review:
a. available to everyone with more than 5 employees (regardless of length of employment or position (aka executive)
b. Four months (17 1/3 weeks)
c. Must be medically necessary
d. Can be used intermittently for Dr. appointments, etc.
e. Covers pregnancy related disability only
f. They can't count weeks when the office is closed (aka, they close between X-mas and New years, etc.)
2. Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA): This is a federal law which covers all the states in the US. It is more restrictive in access, since it only applies if you've worked for your company for 1250 hours and one year. Your employer must also have at least 50 employees in a 75-mile radius (aka, if you are the Long Beach office and the rest of the company is in San Francisco, you may be screwed). Additionally this leave applies for 12 weeks out of the year. The company gets to define the year based upon a set of criteria. It's typically set to start the day you request it, and defines a year as the 52 weeks following your request. Alternatively it could be (like the UC system) a calendar year or a fiscal year. It's critical to know how your company defines a year, since that can make a huge difference to how you get your leave. FMLA also covers not just your pregnancy, but any additional family leave. Say your mom is ill, etc. It does not cover same-sex domestic partners. Also, it covers bonding time with the baby until the baby is 1 year old. If you take bonding leave, your employer is able to require you to take it in 2 week minimum increments.
Let's review:
a. Available to those who've worked 1250 hours and been employed at least 1 year with over 50 employees
b. 12 weeks of time in a year (rolling, calendar, or fiscal year)
c. Must be medically necessary before birth, but does cover bonding time after birth
d. Can be used intermittently for Dr. appointments, etc.
e. Can be used for more than just pregnancy, must be a 'covered' family member
f. 30 days notice if possible.
e. Available for bonding until baby is 1 year old
3. California Family Rights Act (CFRA): Also only in California. This Act is part of the Fair Housing and employment act and is a fairly interesting legal act. It covers medical leaves for other family members (including domestic partners) but DOES NOT cover pregnancy disability. This is critical, because this is the defining point which helps ensure that you can get time to bond with baby, even after having an extended leave before the birth. FMLA and CFRA do overlap for other medical conditions (aka a sick mom) but they DO NOT overlap for pregnancy-related medical conditions.
Let me show you what this might mean for a vaginal live-birth during a normal pregnancy:
4 weeks pre due date you leave for disability
Baby is one week late, still on disability
Baby arrives on Saturday :-) Yeah!
6 weeks postpartum disability
=11 weeks of FMLA leave used
CFRA kicks in
=12 weeks of baby bonding time
You can use CFRA intermittently, and this is when it's possible to take leave later in the baby's life, since you get to take it until the baby is 1 year old. You could return to work after your 6 weeks of disability, then take the month before the baby's birthday, or some other time off as needed for baby bonding. Since this CANNOT run concurrently with either PDL or FMLA for pregnancy related conditions, if you take no other family medical leave, then you are entitled to 12 weeks after you get off of disability. If you request the leave, your employer can allow you to take CFRA before the baby comes based off of your request. Though, there are other options, explained below that may be better.
To Review:
a. Available to those who've worked 1250 hours and been employed at least 1 year with over 50 employees
b. 12 weeks of time in a year (rolling, calendar, or fiscal year)
c. Does not cover pregnancy-related medical leave, but does cover bonding time after birth
d. Can be used intermittently (2 week minimum can be required, except on two occasions when they must grant a shorter leave)
e. Can be used for more than just pregnancy, must be a 'covered' family member
f. 30 days notice if possible.
g. Bonding/accommodations until baby is 1 year old
4. Fair Housing and Employment Act (FHEA): This typically doesn't come into play for most women during their pregnancy, but should you have a really difficult pregnancy and require additional leave or medical care it's important to know your rights. The FHEA act includes provisions for disability accommodations. Since federal law means that pregnancy is a disability you could exhaust your PDL and FMLA, as well as use your CFRA before baby's born you may still be entitled to accommodations from FHEA. Under FHEA accommodations can include necessary leave. A perfect case for this is Sanchez vs. Swissport, Inc Cal. App. 4th (2013). In the case a woman was granted both PDL and requested additional leave due to disability until the birth of her child. The trick here is that it can't cause an un-due burden on the employer. However since 4 months of PDL is required regardless of burden, it might be hard to prove that additional time creates a more undue burden. But, I'm not a lawyer ;-)
Whew! What a lot to cover. Do you have any questions? I can try to answer them if you do. The links included are the actual texts of the laws, so those can be very helpful.
Next we'll cover how you get paid...
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