One Middle Georgia city considering paid maternity leave for employees

City Councilman Chuck Shaheen is proposing that the city add a paid maternity leave benefit for city employees.

Now, employees have to take sick leave or vacation time for maternity leave. In Tuesday’s precouncil meeting, Shaheen asked council members to consider allowing employees to take up to four weeks of paid maternity leave without having to use their other paid time off.

Employees can also take up to 12 weeks of leave without pay for maternity leave. They also have an option of a short-term disability plan that they pay for.

“To me it’s the cycle of life to have a baby, but yet you’ve got to take your personal sick days to do it,” Shaheen said. “I think it would be a great gesture on our part to offer employees” maternity leave.

He asked that the proposal be voted on at that meeting, but other council members did not seem willing to move that quickly. Some of them wanted to see what other cities are doing.

Councilman Mike Davis said his concern is that some employees abuse their sick leave, taking days as soon as the time is accumulated. Davis said an employee with the city for four years would have earned eight weeks of sick leave. Some would still have it available, while others who abuse it might have used it all.

“So now I’m going to give them a month’s pay because they abused their sick leave, where I’ve got a good employee who hasn’t use their sick leave, they’ve got eight weeks,” Davis said.

Shaheen said the fact that some employees may abuse sick leave shouldn’t factor into it. He also expressed disappointment that council was not willing to vote on it immediately.

“I’m just stunned that this takes controversy to do something good for the employees,” he said.

Toni Graham, the city’s employment and benefits manager, said the city actually had discussed the issue in 2010. They checked with 30 other cities in the state and found none that had separate maternity leave, so the issue was dropped. She said Marietta is the only city she knows of since then that has adopted a separate paid maternity leave policy.

She noted that if Warner Robins did adopt paid maternity leave, it would also need to consider the same benefit for fathers.

Barry Holland, Houston County’s director of administration, said the county does not have separate paid maternity leave. County employees also either take sick leave or vacation.

Ben Hubbard, Macon-Bibb County’s human resources director, said the same policy also applies there.

This story was originally published January 19, 2017 at 4:11 PM with the headline "One Middle Georgia city considering paid maternity leave for employees."