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Leave Policy

The following are leave policies for Austria.
 
Erholungsurlaub
 
This annual holiday is one of the most important entitlements for employee leave in Austria. It affords workers the opportunity to enjoy eighteen working days of paid leave from their jobs. In addition, the law regulates collective agreements on holiday leave to be arranged between employees and their employers, which sometimes results in five to six weeks of leave. The annual holiday period must take place as one consecutive period during a single calendar year. While employees can decide how to spend their holidays, they cannot partake in any paid employment during this annual holiday period.
  Austrian Child (attributed to Alex E. Proimos of flickr)
Mutterschutz/Vaterschutz
 
This Austrian policy provides employment protection for expecting mothers. These individuals enjoy special protection against job dismissal when they inform their employers of pregnancy. Expecting mothers cannot be made to work hard labor assignments, graveyard shifts, weekends, or public holidays. In addition, this policy does not allow pregnant women to be employed during a period of eight weeks prior to the expected delivery date or eight weeks following the actual delivery date. During this sixteen week period, however, mothers receive a form of maternity benefit called “Wochengeld” as a form of health insurance. 
 
Parental Leave
 
In Austria, families who opt to have one parent remain at home taking care of the child and one working receive more financial support than the same family structure does in many other countries. The parent who takes the parental leave (usually the female) will typically take it for the maximum amount of time and will not search for a flexible care alternative.

Austria allows for any parent who cared for the child to be eligible for a government-paid allowance regardless of their participation in the labor force. Despite this fact, only two percent of recipients are male. Most of the family care leave policies have originated in the center-right and right-wing political parties. These policies are based on the idea that the family is an important institution for society.
 
Karenzurlab

Parental leave policy in Austria is quite good in the early years of a child’s life. It allows for 16 weeks of maternity leave with payment and regular employment leave for the first two years of the child’s life (18 months for one parent and 6 months for the other). Besides one month, both parents cannot take the leave at the same time.

There are two main rules with relation to those in the parental leave program.
  1. They must be allowed to earn a marginal amount of money (up to 15% of APE earnings). [APE is the Average earnings of a Production Employee].
  2. They are allowed to return to their original place of employment at the end of the two years of leave. This does not entitle the employee to adjust their working schedule around their childcare needs.

    Austrian Parliament (attributed to Aschaf of flickr)

References:

Auer, Manfred. 2002. "The Relationship Between Paid Work and Parenthood-A Comparison of Structures, Concepts and Developments in the UK and Austria." Community, Work & Family 5(2):203-218.

Morgan, Kimberly J. and Kathrin Zippel. 2003. “Paid to Care: The Origins and Effects of Care Leave Policies in Western Europe.” Social Politics 10(1):49-85.

Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. 2003. "Babies and bosses: reconciling work and family life: v. 2, Austria, Ireland and Japan." Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development/Organisation de Coopération et de Développement Economiques.
Tulane University