Pregnant on temporary research contract?

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Hi,

I'm thinking of getting pregnant whilst I'm on a temporary research contract. I'll probably have around 4 months left on the temporary contract when I go on maternity leave. Has anyone been in this situation? Did you get full maternity pay from the university or no? Was the contract extended or did it just end or redundant? HR are sadly not helping much but I will ask them again.

The policies for maternity leave and short term contracts vary by university/funder for research. If RCUK you should be able to get an extension, to get your 4 months after you come back from leave.

If HR are not being helpful, check out your university's Athena SWAN submission and plan. It would be normal for the policies to be described there.

You'll need to find out who funds your post & how. If it's a contract with a research council, it will generally be under the terms of the grant, rather than the University's employment conditions.

So check your contract and the funder's policy. There's no blanket advice, you'll need to ask your specific funder or your PI.

You are protected by the EU fixed term working regulations and can't be treated differently than a permanent employee when it comes to maternity leave and pay. However, whether the contract will continue afterwards would depend on funder - some have very good maternity policies. Good info here www.workingmums.co.uk/advice-and-support/maternity-rights-and-contracts-ask-the-expert/.

DP got pregnant on her temporary contract - she was a research assistant employed by the university, not a postdoc (no idea if this is relevant). She got maternity pay, because of the length of time she'd been working there.

Her contract was extended a little bit, though it would have been extended more had her PI got another grant - he had been hoping to extend everyone's contracts and carry on with his project, but didn't get funding, and so hers finished. In fact there was a point when we were a bit worried what would happen if the PI's funding ran out before DP finished maternity leave. She was required to go back for at least x number of months (I forget how many!), and at one point it looked as if she'd have nothing to go back to! So check what happens there, too.

I was in almost exactly this situation last year. As others have said, the rules will vary according to institution/funder so you would need to check for your specific situation. In my case, I was able to freeze my contract while on maternity leave (to be honest they would have struggled to get someone to do maternity cover for the four months I had left). So I did have a job to go back to. But unfortunately, even though I had been employed by my institution for many years (on a series of fixed term contracts), I was not entitled to full contractual maternity pay as the fixed term nature of my post meant that I could not guarantee that I would be coming back for 12 months after my maternity leave. So I had statutory maternity pay only.