An AUFA academic recently adopted a newborn. Article 16.7 of the collective agreement outlines parental leave benefits for AUFA members who adopt children. These provisions include a three-month period of leave with full pay plus an additional period of unpaid leave. The combined paid and unpaid leaves can total no more than 62 weeks of leave. During the unpaid leave, AU continues to provide benefits and the AUFA member may be entitled to claim Employment insurance (EI) benefits.
In this case, the adoption occurred approximately halfway through the AUFA member’s research and study leave (RSL). The member sought to pause their RSL for a period of six months of parental leave and resume RSL after the parental leave was complete. This is in keeping with past practice and a normal means of accommodation.
AU denied the member’s request to pause their RSL. Instead, AU indicated that if the member wished to take a parental leave, the member could terminate the RSL. This option would derail the member’s research plans and mean waiting at least three years before the member could apply to take another leave. This is a significant matter of equity and discrimination, punishing a member for their family status.
AU has offered little explanation for its refusal to accommodate the member’s parental leave, other than they simply did not have to do it. The paper trail suggests this decision to not accommodate was made within HR, not at the faculty level. The member’s supervisor and Dean had not only approved pausing their RSL, but were extremely supportive of the plan.
AU has an obligation to accommodate an AUFA member’s family status, which includes an obligation to provide care to an infant. AU also has a lengthy history of pausing RSL when members become sick, take maternity leave, or require other forms of leave. Given these obligations, the history of past practice, and the absence of any reason to think the member’s request would cause any undue hardship on AU, AUFA filed a grievance and had warned HR that a complaint with the Alberta Human Rights Commission was being seriously considered.
Work now, grieve later
A guiding principle of labour relations in Canada is that, when workers and unions disagree with an employer’s administration of the collective agreement, they are required to follow the employer’s direction until their grievance or complaint can be resolved. Given the delays common to grievances and human right complaints, this “work now, grieve later” doctrine means workers are basically stuck making due.
Given that, the member did, under protest, decide to continue the RSL until it ends in June and then commence a short parental leave. This is not the arrangement the member wanted, but it was the only option reasonably available to the member.
This arrangement is sub-optimal. It denied the member the opportunity to be with their newborn baby on a full-time basis and bond with them. It also requires the member and the member’s family make unexpected, expensive, and difficult arrangements for childcare during the remaining period of the member’s RSL.
The member asserts that AU’s unwillingness to provide the most basic of accommodations has turned what should be a joyous time into one marked by stress, conflict, and a profound sense that the member has been betrayed by AU when the member was most vulnerable.
This behaviour by AU sits uncomfortably with the university’s i-CARE values that undergird its Imagine plan These values allegedly include:
Integrity: We are guided by ethics, honesty, and fairness in all our actions, engendering trust within our University community.
Adaptability: We are flexible. We respond to the changing needs of our University and its learners with courage and continuous improvement.
Respect: We foster respect by contributing to an environment in which every individual is valued.
Denying a member parental leave for no reason doesn’t engender trust, doesn’t respond to the changing needs of the university staff, and doesn’t show employees that they are valued. This is the latest in a series of large and small attacks on its members that includes but is not limited to:
accidentally terminating market supplements for female nurses with no notice,
trying to roll back contract protections, targeting professional members in particular,
failing to carve two-thirds of AUFA members out of union and then turning to picking members off one-by-one,
accusing a member with a terminally ill spouse of faking their stress leave,
refusing to table a full offer in bargaining for months on end,
implementing a disastrous re-organization of IT,
dissolving a promotion committee without cause, and
permanently moving staff to home offices without a policy or adequate compensation.
AU had reversed the decision to deny pausing the member’s RSL, only after significant pressure from AUFA. Unfortunately, damage had already been inflicted as the member and their family had to scramble to change their plans and incurred significant monetary cost—including loss of pay for the member’s partner. Moreover, the sudden denial made it necessary to look into hiring a nanny—extremely difficult for the new parents—and, to make it all work, the member’s mother-in-law made trips up from Calgary to Edmonton to watch over the new baby. She made the trip every week until it became too unsustainable.
It is unclear if the denial of RSL is the misguided actions of one HR staffer or if, indeed, AU’s i-CARE values are simply a sham. A very real question AU may need to confront very soon is why anyone would want to take a job for such a poorly run and mean-spirited organization.
Happy Mother’s Day from AU, I guess.
Richard Roach, Executive Director
Your turn
We’d like to hear what you think about AU’s unwillingness to pause a member’s sabbatical while the member was on parental leave. All comments are anonymous. We’ll compile the comments you leave below and provide them to Chief HR boss Charlene Polege.