Fixed-term contracts and maternity leave -- any experience?

[atalantis]

I'm currently five months into a three year fixed-term contract as an academic researcher. I'm due to go on maternity leave in September 2007 and am hoping to take a full year off. I should be entitled to maternity pay, but I'm not sure what my employers will do about the length of my contract; will they add the year of maternity leave as an extra year on the end of the contract, or will the maternity leave be part of the three years? Within my institution, there's no precedent for this, so we're all a bit in the dark. I've written to my union for advice, but they've not yet replied. I was just wondering whether anyone else has been in a similar situation.

Atlantis,

I'm also an academic on a fixed term contract (due in July). My maternity leave has now been agreed. There's nothing in law to require them to extend your contract (although this will of course depend on what your contact says) but I've managed to persuade them to do this (and to pay me more than SMP!).

There was no precedent for my position either but I had a few friends who were on Dorothy Hodgkin fellowships (Royal Society fellowships in the sciences) when they went on maternity leave and the policy there is to pay you the standard maternity pay for your Uni and to extend your contract. My employer was happy to accept that as the best comparison for my post even though in law they could have been harsher. I think it will partly depend on the source of funding for your post. If it is a research council post where the funding only lasts for your contract period you may have more difficulty. I looked into a few other positions so if you don't mind saying more about your post I'll tell you if I found anything similar.

Sorry for the long and very specific post!

Hi Catz -- many thanks for your reply. I'm paid by an Oxford college rather than a research council, so I suppose it's really at their discretion. I work in the humanities rather than the sciences, which I hope will make things easier as I don't work as part of a team. My great hope is that they'll adopt the 'Dorothy Hodgking' principle and allow me both maternity pay and an extension to my contract. My contract doesn't give any details about this, but the further particulars for my job state that the college offers maternity rights 'comparable to those of the university.' I assume this means in terms of pay, rather than length of contract, though. Tricky.

Hi,

I'm at an Oxford College in the humanities too. Are you a JRF? Our JRFs get the option either to (a) take full pay and get no extension or (b) have SMP only and extend the contract. Though of course that's just my college so no reason why it would be the same in others (is it ever!) and I am at a relatively rich college....

Atlantis,

By the way, if you want to CAT me then do and I can give you more specific details.

Catz

Thanks, Catz. Have done so. Look forward to hearing from you soon.