My colleague Lisa Schiltz notes that even with its impressive social safety net, Australia is one of only two industrialized nations (along with the US, of course) that have no laws requiring employers to provide any paid maternity leave. So there remains a crucial role for non-state actors in realizing CST's promise, and that's where the Australian Catholic University stepped in a few years ago. From Lisa's recent paper, Motherhood and the Mission: What Catholic Law Schools Could Learn from Harvard about Women:
In August 2001, ACU announced that it was implementing a new maternity leave policy for all of its staff. Every staff member who had been employed for at least two years was entitled to a full year’s paid maternity leave – the first 12 weeks at full pay, and an additional 40 weeks at 60% pay. A few months later, this same policy was extended to faculty. . . . ACU did not adopt this policy in response to any union pressure, any law suit, or any threat of more stringent regulation. . . . The chief motivation given by the administration for taking this radical step was to support families and to openly acknowledge parenting as a significant aspect of the life of its employees. As one ACU administrator stated, “[W]e can’t treat our employees as if parenting doesn’t matter. We believe it does and are committed to that value.” This generous support of families was characterized as being “in line with a progressive tradition of social justice and equity . . . consistent with our ethos as a Catholic institution.” While ACU hoped that its generous policies would have the incidental effect of attracting and retaining good women staff, the University stressed that the decision was made “because it was right: parents, women, and men, should not be disadvantaged in the workplace because they have children.”
Rob
