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Totally legal, there is no mandate on maternity leave whatsoever. You may be eligible for FMLA so you could take up to 12 weeks (so if they don't allow that it would be illegal). You could also look into FLSA regarding exempt or non-exempt and the repercussions of that. But it probably wouldn't change much.

It definitely sucks and I hate the maternity leave situation in the US but there is nothing illegal about it (unless it is FMLA or FLSA). I don't live in Texas so, there may be a state statute (Cali has them but they have all sorts of crazy work laws most states don't have) that would give you more.

That sounds similar to my district. I had 22 days of annual leave, which I had to use first. Then I took close to 9 weeks of unpaid leave. HR added up the number of days I was away, multiplied by my daily rate and then divided that number by the number of paychecks I had left in the year. They docked my checks a certain amount for the rest of the fiscal year.

I was pretty happy with that arrangement and it didn't strike me as illegal? It sucks to have little paychecks but I didn't work those days, so I'm not going to get paid for them.

We get about 4 weeks disability at my school, which doesn't kick in until about 10 days after you give birth, so most tack on all the sick/personal days (10 days) to the beginning. That's what I'll do, and then the six weeks should take me to Christmas break. According to the woman in our business office, if the doctor says my start back date is during break, they have to pay me my regular salary for break, and then my plan is to take the two weeks after break off, so I will start second semester with my kids.

@matador84: in a way, it's good they let you use your PTO. When I worked in Texas that was also standard, and I had almost 40 days accrued, which would have been 40 paid days of Mat leave.. Then I moved to NJ before I got pregnant, and in my district here, they don't let you use sick or personal days at all, so I literally got 0 paids days off.

Sucks to be me sometimes! But I'm still choosing t take the full 12 weeks unpaid to be with my baby.

@matador84: so you do get paid for your maternity leave? I think that's amazing! I had to take 10 weeks off unpaid. I had no short term disability either.

Ohhhh, i see!! Since you won't be working your total number of days, they days you do work, you get a reduced rate. That doesnt make any sense!! I would be way POd if my job tried to tell me my salary basically decreased because I had a baby. I mean, obviously it will decrease because i didn't get paid for 10 weeks, but the weeks I do get paid, i get my normal pay.

So basically, you get 6 weeks off. 2 weeks are normal pay from PTO, 4 weeks are unpaid totally. Then when you go back to work you get your pay docked for four more weeks then back to your normal pay?!?

I had a teaching job that was outside of Houston, and it was similar. I knew that I wasn't going to come back the following school year, or even after my maternity leave was up, and my principal actually called me in and said I should just quit when the baby is born because it is cheaper.

I know it doesn't work like that in NY for teachers. When I was on maternity leave for DD, I got full pay for 6 weeks and after that it was just "unpaid." They didn't do any of that "you didn't work the 187 days" nonsense that they did to me in TX.

It seems weird that you have to take the 10 days off, and then end up paying them back. But, it sounds like that is pretty normal in TX (at least in my experience).

@matador84: I'd investigate that with HR, it doesn't sound right or legal at all. They shouldnt be able to charge you *more* money for being on unpaid leave! If they are forcing you to use the 10 days and then turning around and saying, "oh you didn't work a full year so you didn't earn those 10 days and we have to charge you", that is some whack bullshit. They should just say you don't have any PTO, since you're not working the full year in the first place! Booooo.