You are entitled to 26 times your weekly employment hours of parental leave per child under the age of eight. This means the number of hours per week in your contract. For instance, if you are employed for 24 hours per week, you are entitled to 26 times 24 hours of parental leave. The University pays for 13 times 24 hours of your parental leave (partial pay), and the remaining 13 times 24 hours is unpaid.

Paid parental leave

You are entitled to 13 times your working hours per week in paid leave. You will receive 70% of your pay for the hours of parental leave that you take in your child’s first year of life. From the second year of your child’s life, you will receive 62.5% of your pay over the hours of paid parental leave. We offset any paid leave that you have already received from another employer.

For instructions please read this Knowledge Item.

Unpaid parental leave

In addition to paid parental leave, you are entitled to 13 times your weekly contract hours of unpaid parental leave. If you have not taken 13 times your weekly contract hours of paid parental leave, you can still take these weeks as unpaid parental leave.

For instructions please read this Knowledge Item.

Financial consequences

Parental leave can have certain consequences:

• Pension accrual

  Full pension accrual continues during paid parental leave. The employer and employee contributions remain unchanged. While you are on unpaid parental leave, you yourself pay both the employer and the employee pension contributions. The PSSC Service Point can calculate the extra costs for you.

• Annual leave

  You do only accrue statutory annual leave over the hours of parental leave.

• Illness

  In the event of illness or incapacity, you cannot postpone your parental leave. You will therefore continue to be paid 70% or 62.5% of your salary, depending on the age of your child during the parental leave.

• Travel expenses

  Your commuting allowance is based on your actual number of working days that you travel to a university location. If the number of travel days to a university location changes due to taking parental leave, you must adjust this in the schedule in the Service Portal.

Suspension of parental leave

The University agrees to a request for suspension of paid parental leave: 

• in the case of maternity or adoption leave during the period of paid parental leave; 
• in case of transfer of maternity leave due to death of the mother; 
• in case of adoption leave. 

The University is not required to agree to the request for suspension until four weeks after the request is made.