Chicago is offering 12 weeks of paid parental leave to city employees. The new policy applies to birthing and nonbirthing parents.
For a city that, for years, had no maternity policy for its female employees, Chicago has certainly come a long way, baby.
In yet another pre-election sweetener, Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced Friday that the city is expanding its parental leave policy, effective Jan. 1, to allow all 32,000 city employees up to 12 weeks of paid parental leave whether they are the “birthing or non-birthing parent.”
Chicago’s parental leave policy now offers four to six weeks of paid leave for birth parents, depending on the type of birth, and two weeks for “nonbirth” parents. The policy has not been revised since 2011.
The mayor’s office claimed the expansion to 12 weeks of paid leave — for “those growing their family by birth, adoption or foster care, as well as those acting as a surrogate” — would make Chicago “one of the largest cities in the Midwest and across the country” to implement such a generous policy.
To qualify for full pay for 12 weeks of leave, city employees must work for the city for at least one year before the parental leave begins and have worked at least 1,250 hours during those 12 months. The federal Family Medical Leave Act has similar eligibility requirements.
The unprecedented expansion for all city employees evolved from contract talks between the city and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
The union proposed to “significantly expand paid parental leave” to match the 10 weeks offered by the state during contract talks three years ago, and after reaching a tentative agreement with the union, Lightfoot expanded the policy to all city employees.
The new policy comes just in time for Edwina Mitchell, a food protection employee for the city’s Department of Public Health. She’s the mother of a 4-year-old and is