Signed Leave of Absence Agreement Made Easy

Esign leave of absence agreement

Hi YUSA members. I'm Sonny Day and I'm going to talk to you about taking an unpaid leave of absence sometimes known as an article 20 leave so what is this? Well, basically you take time off from work you don't get paid but you get to come back after you're finished your leave so normally an unpaid leave of absence can be for up to 12 months and you're in that case your department head has to approve it. If it's more than 12 months of unpaid leave that you want to take then the assistant vice president of Human Resources would have to approve that. Now if it's up to 12 months, you get rights back to your job, right? So after you return you know they hold your position for you and you just go right back to the job that you're in before if it's more than 12 months then when you come back you would get basically three months of internal posting rights where you could apply for another job but there there have been circumstances where people have taken longer than twelve months leave of absence and have had their job held for them but you need to get that approved by you know your manager and also the Union would have to approve and they would have to do that in writing before you took your leave now this is different than if you apply for a temporary one-year position inside of the university if you apply for a temporary position inside of the university, article 12.05 already allows you to go and sort of take a leave to go into that job and then come back to your current job so you don't need to use article 20 if if you're applying for another 1 year or less position inside of York University in in unit 1. So what can you use this leave for well the collective agreement says you do have to tell your manager the purpose of why you're taking this leave but you know there's no necessary restriction on why you're doing it so if you want to take a year and backpack across Europe you can do that right? Some things people have done is you know they wanted to take a course like a one-year intensive course so they they took time off to do that course and then came back there's also been people they've taken a 1-year position at a different employer and, you know, this is a position that they they wanted to learn from and take those skills that they learned and bring it back to their departments so they've taken unpaid leave at York to go with that other employer and then come back for that temporary contract. You know how much detail you provide is up to you when you're telling your manager about this but it's it's I think it's good to tell the manager why you're doing it and how that can be a benefit to the department or to you when you come back from from your leave. Now, does your manager need to approve this leave? So the contract what it says is, you know, departmental operating requirements shall be the major consideration in granting or denying the leave which shall not however be unreasonably denied so basically that means if if the department really really needs you for for some reason then they can say no so let's say you work in a kind of specialized job and you're the only person who can do it and if you were to leave it were to cause this huge disruption to the department, your manager may have a basis for saying no but if you if you ask and they say no then I would say contact the Union and, you know, we can look into it and and and see what we can do to help you. Now, how often can you apply for the leave? Well, normally you can do this once every three years. So if you took a year off on an unpaid leave of absence normally you'd have to come back for three years before you could apply for it again. So how do you actually do it? Well, it's pretty simple you would just have to send an email to your manager and you have to give them at least 20 working days notice before you intended to begin your leave and the more notice you can give them the better obviously so they can plan and just let them know: Hey, I want to take a leave under Article 20 of the collective agreement and here's when I want it to start and here's when I want it to end and this is why I'm taking it right? And then they will have to respond to you. So could you come back early so let's say you're on the leave let's say you applied for a year leave of absence and you are backpacking through the middle of Europe and you decide: you know what? I really miss York University, it's only been six months I want to come back can I do that? Yes, you can, so if you're on the leave you want to come back early you just need to send another email to your manager saying: Hey, I've decided to come back you need to give them 20 working days notice so give them 20 days notice and then you'll be able to come back basically at the end of those 20 days even if you had originally requested a longer leave than that. Now so people wonder what what happens to my benefits during the leave? So, you do get to keep your benefits but you have to pay the premiums and the amount of premium you have to pay depends on how long your leave is so if it's up to three months so if your leave is basically three months or shorter then you would just pay your employee portion of your benefit premiums but the employer would pay their portion. After three months you have to pay both the employee and the employer portion of your benefit premiums and if you want to know how much that's going to be you can contact the pension and benefits office you can just email "askpb@yorku.ca" and they can tell you. But if you want to get a rough idea you could just just look at your pay stub and you will see what the employee and employer deductions are and that will give you a rough idea of what you have to pay. If you don't want to have benefits during your leave you don't have to you can elect to pay nothing but then you would not be covered for for any of the benefits. People also wonder what happens to your seniority so up to 3 months you continue to accrue seniority but at the three month mark it basically gets frozen so once you come back, you know, you would have three months seniority but not beyond that, okay? If you have any other questions feel free to contact the union office. I'm Sonny Day and thank you for listening. Thanks.