If you are gone for a year for maternity leave, who covers your job that whole time?
I know that it was hard for my coworkers to cover mine for 12 weeks. I can't imagine for 52 weeks!
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Where I work they hire someone for a one year contract.
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Well it'd be the employer's responsibility to hire someone I guess. We own our own company and so far no one has needed any maternity leave (I'm the only woman who works here), but we would probably hire a whole new person and plan to keep both when the person on leave came back. We wouldn't really want to train a person only to have them leave after a year.
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We redistributed some work to various people within the group. Actually they hired someone a few months before I left to take on some of my work (copyediting), but she didn't work out and they didn't bother hiring anyone else. The one other copy editor took on my work and made it fit into her schedule and responsibilities.
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They post a temp contract for the duration of mat leave.
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They will likely be posting my job as a one-year assignment (although I'm only here for 3 more weeks and they haven't finalized anything yet!) If they don't get approval to hire someone, the people currently in my division will have to re-shuffle files to cover off for me...which kind of makes me nervous since having people cover off for me might make it look like i'm not really "needed". Although I am "guaranteed" my position when I get back, there were a lot of cuts while I was on my last maternity leave and even while they were on mat leave, some people had to compete for their jobs. I was lucky and didn't have to, but I'm always nervous that it could happen again. Haha, sorry, long answer to your short question!
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I am a teacher, so my school hires someone from the districts on call list for a temporary contract. In private business, the company often uses a recruitment/temporary employee service to fill the position
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A replacement is typically hired on a one-year contract. In my case we hired an internal candidate, but often external candidates are hired. It's a great opportunity for people to gain experience to add to their resumes.
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I'm a teacher so a new teacher got a one year contract .
In many job fields covering maternity leaves is a great way to get your foot in the door and usually leads to a second mat leave/permanent position after the year is up.
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They hired someone to cover for the year. ... well technically about 10.5 months because they hired them too late and I'd already been gone for a bit!
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They hired someone to take my place. I trained her for about 3 weeks before I left.
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Posted and hired for a replacement! A colleague of mine began April 1st in my position until I come back Aug 2015!
You would think it would be easier to cover 52 weeks over 12? Longer term, easier to get buy-in/commitment? Just the norm here I guess, and usually a great opportunity for career progression or a taste of the next level where I work.
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Another question:
Who pays for maternity leave?
Companies just have to foot the bill to contract someone for a year? -
@Smurfette: I was wondering the same thing.
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@Smurfette: the govt gives 55% of your salary (max of about $514 week) for a year. The first 15-17 weeks is for the mother, the last 35-37 weeks can be taken by either parent.
Some employers "top up" for a portion of the leave as part of their benefits package. My BFFS employee tops her up to 75% of her salary. My employer instead gives me 12 weeks full pay.
So the govt has most of the leave costs and the employer pays the new employee accordingly plus any applicable benefits to the parent.
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@char54: So you could take 6 months and then your DH could take the last 6 months? That's nice.
US policy just sucks.
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@Smurfette: My employer tops up our pay to bring it to about 97% of our pay for the full year. I am super lucky. They won't hire someone from outside my organization to fill in for me, but rather post it as an assignment for someone already working within my branch (so they would be paying that person's salary anyways).
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@Smurfette: Ya you can split the remaining time however you like.
I totally feel for you US mamas. How you go back to work at 12 weeks (or earlier!) is total superhero status in my eyes!
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@char54: @Smurfette: Just for the sake of clarity, while the EI (employment insurance) payments come to us from the government, we all pay into EI. Deductions are taken off every pay cheque. So our contributions are essentially being paid back to us while on leave. It's not, technically, the government's money.
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@heartonastring: Well technically any govt benefit is citizens money since it all comes from us to start!
Just out of curiosity, do you know off-hand around what your effective tax rate is? I've always been curious how that works between the US v. Canada-- like how much more you guys REALLY pay in taxes. Like for example, if you figure out ALL the taxes I pay as a % of my salary, my take-home pay is about 71% of my gross income (29% effective tax rate). No worries if you don't know or don't want to share, and I know it is based on income and also where you live, same as here. But I just have no concept of the range you're even talking about with canadian taxes.
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@Mae: No idea if this is correct but I've heard 50% thrown around. I'm in the US, about 32% for taxes.
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@heartonastring: true...Though I haven't paid $20,000 during my career into EI which is about what I'm getting back in paid leave from the govt this year.
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@jetsa: I feel like people in the US think they pay more in taxes than they really do, but I could be wrong. I'm really just basing this on the fact that a lot of people don't seem to understand that their tax bracket does not actually mean that % of their totally salary is taken, and the fact that I earn above-the-US-average wages AND am self employed (so I pay that extra 6.75% employer contribution flat tax that most people don't pay) and my effective tax rate is still under 30%.
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@jetsa: @Mae: eta...after realizing its not just my tax bracket (duh!) I pay around 24% total .
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@Mae: I feel like we pay a lot of taxes for the amount of services we receive but I live in a small rural area and that definitely contributes to that.
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@char54: Lol okay you edited while I was typing. So interesting that you are paying a lower % than I am living in Canada!! And you get an awful lot more for your money
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@Mae: progressive also... I just re-did the calcs and it's much less than I thought !
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@char54: gah, thats depressing to me!
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@jetsa: oh to be clear, I feel like taxes are high for what we're getting. Especially seeing that @char54: is paying less than I am in taxes and getting a year's maternity leave!
But I just meant, I feel like people often say things like "I'm paying half my salary in taxes!" and I think that is not really true, that they just are either exaggerating or don't understand how progressive taxes work.
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@Mae: Oh yes, I agree with that, and isn't that depressing I only took 6 weeks off.
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@Mae: @jesta: our sales tax is pretty high (13%) so that adds up throughout the year especially on big purchases like cars, appliances, etc.
But ya we don't pay crazy taxes like some think and get pretty decent benefits like mat leave and universal healthcare.
@smurfette: sorry for thread jacking!!
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@char54: Yep, same.
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@Mae: Of course, but I feel like sometimes there's a disconnect about that (e.g. I regularly hear people say we get "free" healthcare. No we don't! We pay for it through taxes!)
Our taxes are progressive and the difference between us and the US is THAT different. We do pay more in taxes, particularly because our tax brackets top out at $136k (That's for federal income tax; provincial income tax varies hugely from province to province). Here's a good breakdown though: http://www.kpmg.com/Ca/en/IssuesAndInsights/ArticlesPublications/PersonalTaxRates/federal-and-provincial-income-tax-rates-and-brackets-and-surtaxes-in-2014.pdf
ETA: The money we pay into EI is separate from income tax. It's a separate "tax," for lack of a better term. The maximum insurable earnings is $48k/year. So if you earn $48k+, then you would pay approximately $900/year into EI. If you earn less than $48k/year, then you pay less, on a sliding scale.
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@jetsa: This is my feelings. I don't feel that the amount we pay in taxes is equal to what we get. For example, the medical service we receive is sub-par. I feel that our government is generally very inefficient with our money.
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@pui: Its so interesting to hear that from both sides of the border
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@pui: I'd be interested to see if there is a citizen of any country who feels their government spends their money efficiently and/or that they get their money's worth out of taxes paid (Not saying any of us are wrong... really probably ALL of our govts are inefficient with our money).
@heartonastring: people say the same here. Especially about public benefits stuff like unemployment. Ummm you have to pay into unemployment while you are working soo... lol.
@char54: I can totally see how sales tax would make a difference too. Although that seems like a good compromise somewhat because you can opt in/out of what you're buying. Our sales tax here is 7%, although it varies widely by area.
I started another thread so as to avoid continuing to thread-jack. sorry! lol
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typically they would hire a someone for one year to do my job. But in my case, my boss didn't find anyone for a few months and ended up hiring a student for a lower (for lack of a better word) position to take on part of my job. She was able to stay on after I returned which has been awesome.
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They would have normally hired someone for the year and often that person would be kept on or transferred somewhere else in the company (just filling regular turnover). But for me, there was downsizing just before I left and they are cutting costs whereever they can, so they didn't fill my position. My department is just moving slower while I'm gone.
Just out of curiosity, do you know off-hand around what your effective tax rate is? I've always been curious how that works between the US v. Canada-- like how much more you guys REALLY pay in taxes. Like for example, if you figure out ALL the taxes I pay as a % of my salary, my take-home pay is about 71% of my gross income (29% effective tax rate). No worries if you don't know or don't want to share, and I know it is based on income and also where you live, same as here. But I just have no concept of the range you're even talking about with canadian taxes.
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