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The UC system is considering a policy under which employees would be able to take paid leave for bonding with their babies.

Responding to employee interest, the UC system’s Human Resources unit has proposed allowing employees, including birth parents, adoptive parents and foster parents, to use up to 30 days of accrued sick leave for “baby bonding.”

The proposal is part of an updated absence-from-work policy that consolidates several existing leave policies into a single, comprehensive absence policy.

“In the midst of furloughs and budget cuts, we are still committed to finding ways to improve our employees’ work lives,” said Dwaine B. Duckett, vice president of Human Resources.

Other key changes to the absence from work policy would do the following:

• Allow the use of up to 12 weeks of sick leave, instead of 30 days, for family or medical leave to care for a child, spouse, domestic partner or parent.
• Allow 10 days of bereavement leave, instead of five, for the death of a family or household member.
• Allow employees to use accrued sick leave for the purpose of donating bone marrow (up to five days) or organs for transplant (up to 30 days).
• Amend the policy to include newly enacted Military Caregiver Leave and Qualifying Exigency Leave.
• Add references to paid time off programs that are used by some locations as an alternative to providing traditional vacation and sick leave.
• Specify that a re-employed staff member’s accrued sick leave (from prior service) will be reinstated 90 days after re-employment, instead of 15.
• “UC’s employees, especially the LGBTI community, has been instrumental in advocating for the baby-bonding benefit for some time,” Duckett said. “This is an example of how supporting and managing diversity issues effectively can benefit the entire UC community.”

The proposed policy would apply to all employees who earn sick leave, except those represented by unions; any similar policies for represented employees would be subject to collective bargaining.

Under existing policy, staff can use vacation or compensatory time, with supervisory approval, for baby-bonding leave; sick leave is excluded as an option.

Davis and Sacramento campus employees are welcome to submit comments until March 10, via e-mail to Linda Fairfield, ldfairfield@ucdavis.edu.