The AEU office is regularly contacted by members seeking advice and assistance about their rights and entitlements when they are expecting a child. While it is an exciting time, it can be complex and confusing to plan your time away from work.
We’ve just published Planning for pregnancy, birth, and everything else: your guide to leave, rights and entitlements. This guide is intended to help AEU members understand the basics of pregnancy and birth related industrial rights and entitlements. The guide covers working while pregnant, accessing leave following birth, and returning to work following leave.
Please share this post with any AEU members you know who are planning for pregnancy or parenting.
All AEU members have the same basic entitlements because all AEU members are part of the ACTPS. This means that irrespective of whether you work in a school (regardless of whether you’re a school assistant, teacher, psychologist or school leader), in the ESO, or CIT, the provisions are almost entirely the same. Where entitlements differ, our guide explains this.
We always recommend that you seek additional advice from Shared Services, HR or by contacting the AEU office, as the guide is general advice and there may be something specific about your circumstances that means there are other options available to you.
Here are a few quick highlights – please download the guide for more detail.
During pregnancy
You are entitled to access paid personal leave during pregnancy to attend medical appointments, or if you need to accompany a member of your immediate family or household to a medical appointment. This means you can take personal leave for appointments with doctors, midwives, or for any tests, including if you’re the partner/non-birth parent.
Every pregnant employee has a right to a safe job. If your current job is not safe for your pregnancy, you are entitled to be transferred into a safe job while you’re pregnant.
To do this, you’ll need to provide evidence from a registered medical professional (typically your doctor or midwife). This evidence would generally tell your employer that you are fit for work, but that some or all of your current duties are inadvisable because they expose you to something that will impact on your pregnancy.
If the employer can’t find you a safe job, you’re entitled to paid leave until a safe job can be provided, or until your birth leave commences. This leave won’t reduce your entitlement to paid birth leave.
Types of leave available
The ACTPS enterprise agreements provide a range of leave entitlements associated with pregnancy and birth. Here are the main leave types:
- Birth leave is sometimes called maternity leave. It’s taken by the birth parent. It’s the leave type available to pregnant employees before and after the birth of a child. Birth leave has both paid and unpaid components. The paid component is up to 24 weeks.
- Bonding leave is available to an employee at the time of their child’s birth when the employee is not the primary care giver or birth parent. Bonding leave is paid leave of up to 5 weeks, with an additional week of paid personal leave that can be added.
- Primary care giver leave is available to an employee who is the primary care giver of a newborn child, but who is not eligible for paid birth leave because they are not the birth parent. Primary care giver leave is paid leave of up to 18 weeks (which includes any bonding leave taken).
- Parental leave is unpaid, and essentially extends the amount of time you can take off work following paid leave. It is available to primary care givers only. Parental leave allows you to be absent from work for up to 4 years if you are a teacher, school leader or school psychologist working in the EDU following the birth of your first child (or until the child reaches school age), less any period of birth leave or primary care giver leave taken. For any subsequent children you might have or for other employees working in CIT or as a school assistant, the entitlement is for up to 2 years per child.
There are some restrictions on accessing some leave types. They generally require the employee to have 12 months of continuous service, and casuals generally are not entitled to paid leave. If you have only recently started in the EDU or CIT you may still be eligible if you have recognised prior service in the ACTPS, APS or for another government.
Other pay options and superannuation while on leave
In 2023 Enterprise Bargaining, ACT unions won a doubling to the amount of superannuation paid during periods in which an employee is off work associated with the birth of a child. Under the previous agreement, you were only entitled to receive superannuation payments for up to 52 weeks while taking paid or unpaid leave. As most people having a child take more than a year off work, they typically experienced a lengthy pause in their super contributions while they were doing the unpaid work of parenting.
Our bargaining win means you will now receive superannuation for up to 104 weeks while on paid or unpaid leave associated with the birth of a child. This means that employees who take 2 years off work to care for a baby won’t have a gap in their super earnings.
In addition to this, the Federal Government provides a paid parental leave scheme that can be accessed by both birth and non-birth parents. On 1 July 2024, the federal paid parental leave increased to 22 weeks. This amount will continue to increase by 2 weeks every 1 July until 2026. By 1 July 2026, you will be entitled to 26 weeks of paid parental leave entitlements at the national minimum wage. There are some criteria you need to meet and some rules about how you can split the payment up between a couple.
The best place to go for accurate advice on the federal paid parental leave scheme is the Services Australia website.
Returning to work
While you are on parental leave, you are entitled to access up to 10 keeping in touch days. In effect, this allows you to return to your workplace while on leave. They are regularly used by employees to attend scheduled planning, meetings or training. Using keeping in touch days can also be helpful in transitioning back to work, as well as maintaining currency or accreditation.
When parental leave finishes, you have the right to return to work in your same job, at the same pay as when you left. If there is a situation where your old job doesn’t exist anymore (say, you were an office-based teacher working on a project which has now ended), you’re entitled to return to a job that pays the same as your previous position. This doesn’t apply to the specific duties of the job. For example, if you were a teacher of a Year 4 class before taking leave, and upon returning your school has put on Year 6, this would satisfy the requirement, because you’ve returned to the same ‘job’ – i.e., a teacher – and you’re receiving the same pay.
When you’re caring for a young child, you might find that you need a bit of flexibility at work. A flexible working arrangement puts in place measures such as flexible starting and finishing times, home-based work, part-time work, job sharing, and using leave flexibly. You’re eligible to request a flexible working arrangement if you’re pregnant, if you have a caring responsibility for a child of school age or younger, or another personal circumstance. You should make the request in writing to your manager or principal. You should give some indication of what kind of arrangement might help you.
Check out our guide for more information on these and other entitlements.