Mayor Emanuel today announced that for the first time ever the City of Chicago will implement a 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.

“Implementing the City’s first maternity leave policy and reforming our vacation leave policies brings our City government into the 21st century, while increasing efficiency and reducing costs to the people of Chicago,” said Mayor Emanuel.

In July, the Mayor tasked Commissioner of Human Resources Soo Choi with conducting a thorough review of the City’s leave policies and crafting recommendations to modernize and streamline them. The review concluded that implementing the City's first maternity leave policy will bring the City in line with standards across the public and private sectors. Women will be able to receive four to six weeks paid leave after giving birth; adoptive parents will be eligible to receive 2 weeks; and partners and spouses will receive one week.

In addition to the new maternity leave policy, the Mayor also announced reforms to vacation and administrative leave for non-represented employees:

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.

Administrative leave will undergo further analysis in order to develop a new policy to make practices more efficient. Prior to the results of the analysis, accrual of compensatory time off is frozen. Additionally, use of existing compensatory time as well as discretionary administrative leave time is subject to Chief of Staff approval until a new policy is developed.

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