City employees can take up to 12 weeks paid parental leave — a rarity among Illinois municipalities — under a new policy adopted by the Naperville City Council.
The revised time-off plan also allows employees hired after 2011 to accrue sick days annually up to a maximum of 12 weeks.
Officials said they believe offering paid parental leave for all employees and adding accrued sick time off for those who don’t currently have it will improve the city’s commitment to employees’ work life balance and keep city benefits competitive.
“The kinds of decisions that our employees make on subjects having to do with their family are crucial,” Councilwoman Judy Brodhead said. “I want this city to be one that we’re proud of when we talk about our own employees, and our employees are the most important thing when it comes to what our city has to offer to our residents.”
The cause is one Brodhead began championing a while ago, and during a 2019 budget workshop she requested staff prepare recommended changes for parental leave and sick days.
City employees should not have to make decisions about when they can start a family (based on the number of paid days off they have) and whether they can do so while employed by the city, she said.
“These are really consequential decisions that people are making,” Brodhead said.
The parental leave changes adopted Tuesday are effective immediately and include 12 weeks’ paid leave for birth mothers and six weeks paid leave for all other new parents, including those who adopt or take in a foster child.
City staff researched what comparable municipalities offer when it comes to parental leave and sick leave in preparation for Tuesday’s council meeting.
“In those comparisons, we did not come across another suburban municipality that had the paid parental leave,” city spokeswoman Linda LaCloche said. “From our perspective it’s a great statement to our employees on retention, that we are family friendly and believe in work life balance, and then its also kind of a recruitment tool.”
According to 2018 data from the National Partnership for Women & Families, the city of Chicago and Cook County are two governments that offer paid parental leave. Both allow for six weeks’ paid leave for women who give birth via C-section, four weeks for vaginal births and two weeks for “other purposes,” data says.
While it’s likely Naperville is the first large suburb in Illinois to offer paid parental leave, municipalities outside of the state and entire states already have similar plans in place.
“I would say that with this policy, Naperville is really joining a movement of local, state and soon the federal government in expanding access to paid leave,” said Jessica Mason, senior policy analyst for the National Partnership for Women & Families.
States including Kansas, New York and North Carolina have implemented parental leave for state employees, according to city documents, and the federal government has passed legislation providing 12 weeks’ paid parental leave for federal workers for births, adoptions or child fostering.
The trend is catching on, partially because there is a “rising awareness that in most households, all parents are working,” Mason said.
The changes being made in Naperville show the city’s commitment to having a family-oriented town and to making sure that includes its employees, said Jamie Horner, a social worker for the Naperville Police Department. Horner is pregnant and is to go on maternity leave after this week.
“I feel that the plan we have now is just a bit inadequate for me and my family and other families that are going through similar circumstances,” Horner said. “As much as I appreciate what’s already in place, the financial backing that the changes would make for us would just continue to show the support that the city has for families that are employed by the city.”
When it comes to sick day accrual, Naperville municipal workers, all sworn police and fire personnel, and employees hired before July 1, 2011, can accrue vacation and paid time off days separately from sick time. They are also offered floating holidays as part of available time off, according to city documents.
But non-sworn employees hired after July 1, 2011, draw from a bank of accrued time off rather than being given a fixed number of sick and vacation days. That aspect of the benefits package is not competitive with what other governing bodies offer, according to city documents.
Naperville enacted that plan to simplify time-off benefits and help reduce the costs involved in having to make cash payouts for days not used, officials said.
The plan, however, “consistently falls short of our comparable communities in the total amount and type of time off available to use and causes challenges in the recruitment and retention of employees,” city documents said. Employees who exhaust their paid time-off bank are forced to take off days without pay for extended sick leaves.
Under the changes adopted Tuesday, employees will be able to accrue two weeks of sick time annually and bank up to a maximum of 12 weeks. However, employees will not be allowed to cash out their sick days should they leave their job or retire, and the days cannot be applied to IMRF service credit upon retirement.
Current employees will be credited sick time equal to the amount they would have earned had the sick leave been in place at their time of hire.
Councilman John Krummen said he had to take time off under the Family and Medical Leave Act twice in two years to help his wife through treatments before she died from cancer 19 years ago. The financial burden of going without a paycheck for six out of 24 months was substantial, Krummen said.
The new sick day accrual will essentially provide employees pay for those days.
“Anything we can do here, I’m in favor of,” Krummen said.
Allowing employees to bank sick time provides a “safety net” for when they are ill or need to care for a sick child or family member. Employees can access their sick days after first using one paid time-off day.
“We want to encourage people certainly to, when they are sick, take the time they have accumulated and use that sick time,” said Jim Sheehan, director of human resources for the city.
Mayor Steve Chirico and Councilman Paul Hinterlong said they support parental leave but raised concerns about sick time.
“I’m totally with you guys on the parental leave, but I’m concerned we’re giving away something that long term we’ll have to claw back because of budgets and other things,” Chirico said. “Certainly there is a cost. If we’re paying workers for a day’s salary but not receiving any service to our community, either that service went undone or we are hiring somebody to fill that in.”
City Manager Doug Krieger said there will be some costs involved with the change but the vast majority of positions will not require backfill.
Councilman Patrick Kelly said he sees the changes as wins financially and they demonstrate that the city values its staff.
“If there’s any small cost, I think it will be offset tenfold by the increased productivity and retention, and lack of money that we have to spend to find new employees,” Kelly said.
ehegarty@tribpub.com
