PFL and New Jobs on Maternity Leave
I’m new mom and enjoying the last month of my maternity leave greatly. I plan to be be returning to work for my small SF company and am receiving PFL benefits (my workplace did not offer any additional paid maternity leave). While on leave I’ve been contacted by a different bigger, more prestigious company and am considering taking a new job with them, as salary and benefits are much better.
My questions are these:
A) would I be obligated to pay back any portion of my PFL to my company if I decided to leave now?
B) how much notice do you think is necessary? Since I haven’t been offered anything I’m not going to let my job know that I may not come back. However if it comes to two weeks or less before my start date at the office and I get an offer, how should I handle it?
In addition to obviously not wanting to be on the hook for any PFL repayment, I would also want to handle this with as much tact as possible. My boss and the whole company have been great and I would only leave because with an infant, our family just needs the extra income. Any advice the community has would be so welcome!
thanks!
Parent Replies
A. PFL is paid to you by the state of CA, out of an account funded by your taxes, so you would not be obligated to pay that back to the state or the company. You qualified for it based on what you earned before having your baby, so what you do after won't impact it (unless you're working while also collecting PFL).
If your company had paid extra to get you full salary replacement while you're on leave, you may sometimes be required to pay that back (but companies very rarely enforce this; I've provided employment and HR related legal advice for 15 years now and have never seen a company try to take back maternity or other leave payments).
What is more typical though is that if you don't return from leave, you may need to pay your share of any healthcare premiums the company paid for you while you were on leave.
B. This is very subjective, depending on how small your industry and company are, and what your relationships are like with coworkers and management. A lot of employees at large companies will return for a week or two after being on leave (to meet the requirements for returning from leave so that they don't have to pay back any pay or benefits they received while on leave, and also to oversee the transition of their duties and train their replacement).
I wouldn't give notice until you have an offer in hand, and even then, if the only issue is more pay, I would personally be inclined to be forthright about it and see if your current company might agree to match it rather than lose you.
If you're switching industries or locations and are unlikely to have any further interactions with your current company then it might be easier to just give two weeks notice, and try to set your start date at your new company for 4 weeks after your leave ends. So you'd be back one week, and then give notice.
Keep in mind that the 2 week notice is just a courtesy, not a legal requirement, so your current company could set your end date sooner if they wanted to.