The Importance of Study and Recharge Leave

Why We Continue to Fight for Sabbaticals for All

For decades, senior program officers at the AAUP—well over half the staff—have been eligible to apply for six months of paid study leave (sabbatical) every six years. This benefit, which our staff union is seeking to extend to assistant and associate staff, has become a source of contention in bargaining. Early in the bargaining process, management introduced a proposal to eliminate study leaves and replace them with four-week “recharge leaves” available to all staff after six years of employment. The union countered with a proposal for study leave for all that would allow staff to choose between applying for a six-month study leave and taking a recharge leave of shorter duration; management countered with an offer to retain a one-time study-leave option for a small number of senior program officers hired too recently to have been previously eligible for a sabbatical and later countered again with an offer to increase the recharge leave to five weeks.

We appreciate management’s introduction of the concept of recharge leave, which may provide an alternative to study leaves for some staff, but the push to drastically cut a benefit that already applied to most of the staff exemplifies how the AAUP has approached a number of our equity-based proposals: rather than extending benefits to those who have historically lacked access to them, the AAUP is using racial equity as a rationale for reducing benefits. Providing sabbatical opportunities to the staff not covered by the AAUP’s existing policy should not necessitate cutting the benefit from six months to four or five weeks.

Members of the management team have offered various reasons for singling out study leave as a problem. The AAUP’s study-leave program does not benefit the organization, they say, without offering evidence to support that view—and in spite of abundant evidence to the contrary. Sabbaticals are too disruptive to the regular work of the organization, they say—although in the past, departments have carefully planned for study leaves to minimize disruptions and ensure that the work of the Association continues to be done. Most faculty members are now on contingent appointments and do not have access to sabbaticals, they say—which is true, but does the organization that advocates on behalf of the academic profession really want to join the race to the bottom in its treatment of its own staff? 

In fact, the AAUP is seeking to cut a long-standing study-leave benefit just as other employers are implementing sabbatical programs to attract and retain talented staff. As the Washington Post reported last week in an article about a new sabbatical program for DC government employees,

Sabbaticals have become increasingly popular among employers in the United States, with Habitat for Humanity Philadelphia and Bank of America among the companies to launch paid sabbatical efforts this year. Research by DJ DiDonna, founder of the Sabbatical Project and a senior lecturer at Harvard, found that 80 percent of people who take sabbaticals returned to their company refreshed, The Washington Post’s Heather Long reported earlier this year.

“Sabbatical programs do in fact often lead to greater retention,” [DC city administrator Kevin] Donahue added. “Someone without a sabbatical may find they have to leave to really engage in that self-care or that professional development opportunity.”

Management’s push to eliminate study leave also presents a jarring contrast with the AFT, which offers all of its staff—not just senior staff—sabbaticals of six months to a year every six years. Why, on the heels of an affiliation with the AFT that was intended to make the AAUP stronger, has the AAUP decided to focus on reducing staff benefits below the level of our colleagues at the AFT?

Our staff union is fighting to protect and extend meaningful study and recharge leave because we believe the benefits of such programs far outweigh the costs. Sabbaticals have made it easier to recruit talented staff, including former faculty members who left tenured positions to come to the AAUP. They have also aided in staff retention: amid high turnover in the organization as a whole—which has been much more disruptive to the work of the AAUP than sabbaticals—not a single senior program officer who has pursued study leave in recent years has left the AAUP for a job elsewhere. Instead, these staff members have returned from leave refreshed and ready to bring new skills and knowledge to their work at the AAUP. Sabbatical projects themselves have offered immediate benefits to the organization as well, such as securing grant funding for a new national survey on academic freedom and enabling the development of a series of podcasts on racial equity.

The AAUP’s study-leave policy has long provided those who could access it with valuable opportunities to pursue professional interests and projects that are beyond the scope of their regular duties. Our union entered bargaining more than a year ago with a vision to make the AAUP a more equitable workplace by extending that policy to assistant and associate staff, and we continue to believe that all members of the staff should have access to the opportunities for professional growth, and rest and recharge, that a sabbatical program provides.