Historic Passage of Paid Parental Leave for Federal Employees

Passed by the Senate on December 17, 2019, the 12-week paid parental leave program is part of a defense bill that the president is expected to sign into law. The House approved the legislation last week. The program, beginning in October 2020, will allow federal employees to use paid leave for the birth, adoption or fostering of a child…

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What's Better Than Chocolate? Paid Parental Leave.

This Mother’s Day, what’s better than flowers and chocolate?

Paid parental leave.

Every day, we ask our mothers to do more than their fair share. Now let’s give them the respect they deserve and the time they need to stay healthy, bond with their children, and be successful at home and in the workplace.

Join NTEU in standing behind the mothers who are also dedicated federal employees.

Visit NTEU.org to support paid parental leave.

A Day Without A Woman

March 8 is International Women's Day. To observe the day, the Women's March organizers have suggested that:

  • women refrain from paid and unpaid work
  • people refrain from shopping in stores or online. Exceptions include local small businesses and women-owned businesses that support us (#GrabYourWallet)
  • wear red in solidarity
  • male allies lean into care giving on March 8th, and use the day to call out decision-makers at the workplace and in the government to extend equal pay and adequate paid family leave for women

Should you want to participate by taking the day off, please make sure you submit a leave form and request either unpaid leave, annual leave, compensatory time off, or credit hours used. For comp time and credit hours you must first have accumulated those hours before they can be used.

The organizers are calling this a "strike." Please keep in mind that federal workers cannot strike without the risk of being fired. If you want to make a statement and refuse pay for the day, then you should request leave without pay.

Use or Lose Leave

You may have seen Donna Vizian's memo that came out yesterday regarding "use-or-lose leave." The memo is required by the NTEU-EPA Collective Bargaining Agreement's (CBA) Article 19, Section 3, to minimize the possibility that you inadvertently forfeit leave over the maximum 240 hours of leave employees are allowed to carry from one year to the next. If you give up leave, you're effectively throwing money down the drain.

You are entitled to take annual leave.....

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