Changing family leave policy at Cardiff University

I arrived at Cardiff University in June 2021, a couple of months before my second child was born. Due to ‘continuous service’ requirements on family leave imposed by many UK employers, I was disappointed to miss out on the kind of leave that I had enjoyed when my first child was born.

That was until I realised that at Cardiff, having continuous service would have made no real difference; I’d still only have been entitled to one week of paternity leave at full pay.

This was sufficiently out of kilter with my previous experiences that I decided to compile a dataset of partner leave policies at other Russell Group institutions. (Because Russell Group institutions like to benchmark themselves against other Russell Group institutions.)

Despite establishing that Cardiff’s leave allowances were very much out of kilter with the median for the group that it compares itself against, I wasn’t able to make much progress approaching HR with the issue.

I decided to take it to the local branch of my trade union, UCU. I ended up joining the branch executive, and helping to write a claim for better allowances with my colleagues. I was fortunate to be able to take the claim to the main negotiating forum for the University and its recognised trade unions with other members of the branch executive.

Cardiff University eventually made quite radical improvements to their offering on family leave. I don’t think these changes would have been made, certainly not as quickly as they were, without the claim made by Cardiff UCU.

I’m really pleased to have contributed to improving conditions for staff at my institution. If you would like to talk to me about how you might be able to demand and win better terms for family leave at your own institutions, feel free to drop me a message.

Sandy Gould
January 2023