Excerpt from the 2001 Contract between the University of Massachusetts and the Massachusetts Society of Professors

The Full contract.


27.14 Parental Leave. Effective July 1, 2001, full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty members and librarians on multi-year contracts who become biological or adoptive parents of a child under five years of age shall receive, upon request, a one-semester paid leave. During that semester, which shall be the semester in which the child’s birth or adoption occurs or an adjacent semester, the faculty member or librarian shall be required to use his or her accrued sick leave. Any otherwise eligible faculty member or librarian with insufficient accrued sick leave may draw against the sick leave bank. FMLA leave shall run concurrent with such parental leave, and no affected faculty member of librarian may use sick leave or the sick leave bank to extend this leave, unless such an extension is medically indicated. Any faculty member or librarian taking such a leave must join the sick leave bank prior to commencing the leave and must return for one year of full-time service. Parental Postponement of TDY. A non-tenured faculty member who becomes the biological or adoptive parent of a child under five years of age may, at his or her discretion, delay for one year his or her tenure decision date. A faculty member choosing to exercise this option shall notify the department chair, in writing, no later than six months after the birth or adoption of the child or, if the faculty member takes a leave as described in the paragraph above, no later than two months after the conclusion of the leave. A faculty member may apply for such a delay for the birth or adoption of subsequent children; the decision about whether to approve such additional request(s) shall be entirely within the discretion of the department chair. Child Care. The parties agree to establish a joint committee, comprised of equal numbers of representatives of the Amherst campus administration and the Union, to discuss the 1998 Report of the Campus Child Care Planning Committee and the implementation of the recommendations contained therein.