City Council Adopts City Employee Vacation Reform

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Mayor Emanuel commended Chicago’s City Council for passing an ordinance implementing vacation leave policies to increase efficiencies in the City’s workforce, realize long-term savings for taxpayers and modernize City government.

“We are bringing City government into the 21st century,” said Mayor Emanuel. “I am pleased that the City Council approved this ordinance today – these reforms will help provide better services by increasing efficiency and reducing costs to the people who matter most: the taxpayers of Chicago.”

In July, the Mayor ordered Commissioner of Human Resources Soo Choi to conduct a thorough review of the City’s leave policies and crafting recommendations to modernize and streamline them.

Vacation leave would change from a prospective-earning to a current-year model. Under the new model, employees would only be allowed to carry over a maximum of 5 vacation days from one year to the next. With this reform, monetary compensation paid by the City to retiring employees for unused vacation days would be significantly scaled back:

• Under the current policy, a non-represented employee with more than 25 years of service could retire at the end of 2011 and receive compensation for up to 75 days of vacation. Under the reformed policy that same employee would only be compensated for up to 50 days in 2012; starting in 2013 non-represented employees can receive only up to 30 days. 
• Under the current policy, a non-represented employee with less than 6 years of service could retire at the end of 2011 and receive compensation for up to 39 days of vacation. Under the reformed policy, that same employee would only be compensated for up to 26 days in 2012; starting in 2013 non-represented employees can receive only up to 18 days.

In September, Mayor Emanuel announced the City of Chicago’s first uniform maternity leave policy for non-represented employees in order to modernize the City’s practices and bring Chicago in line with standards from the private and public sectors.

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