My Wife’s Greatest Fear for Her Maternity Leave Is About to Come True

Good Job Her workplace has been up to something. Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by pkripper503 /Getty Images Plus and Svetlana Belkina/Getty Images Plus. Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. Good Job is Slate’s advice column on work. Have a workplace problem big or small? Send it to Laura Helmuth and Doree Shafrir here. (It’s anonymous!) Dear Good Job, My wife is a 30-something human resources professional who has worked for a young startup company she loves for three years. We had our first child in May, and she is taking a year of maternity leave. Before she left, she was one of two women on the HR team. Both are roughly at the same level and report to the same boss. She was anxious about becoming a first-time mother and what it might mean for her career, and she confided those concerns to her boss. Her boss, also a woman, reassured her that she had nothing to worry about and told her to focus on her leave. At the time she went on leave, the company was also looking to hire an experienced manager to take over responsibility for the HR department, allowing my wife’s boss to take HR off her plate and focus on her other responsibilities. After my wife went on leave, they hired that person. She apparently came in and began making significant changes, including trying to substantially alter the role of my wife’s former colleague, who then ended up quitting. Before leaving, the colleague gave my wife a heads-up: She says the new manager told her that she planned to meet my wife around Christmas to tell her she would be “packaged out” when she returned from maternity leave. My wife is devastated. She had specifically worried that having a baby would derail her career, was reassured by her boss, and now has reason to believe exactly that may happen. She’s having trouble enjoying her leave because she’s anticipating losing the job she loves. We’re in Canada, where employees can’t legally be fired for taking maternity leave, although employers can terminate for legitimate reasons such as restructuring. I’m not looking for legal advice, though. I’m wondering how my wife should handle this. Right now, she has only secondhand information, and there are still months before she returns. She doesn’t want to confront her employer based on something she was told in confidence, but it seems awful to spend her entire maternity leave knowing her new manager may have already decided to fire her, especially since the new manager has never actually worked with her. Should she say something to her former boss now? Raise it with the new manager when she returns? Say nothing and see what happens? And if the termination meeting does come, how should she handle it? I’m furious on her behalf, but I don’t want my anger to make things worse for her. —Fuming Husband Dear Fuming Husband, It’s a small comfort, but it might help your wife (and you) to remind yourselves that her parental leave has nothing to do with her possible job loss. Her decision whether or when to have a baby did not derail her career; any derailment is due to the company hiring this new manager and allowing her to change employees’ roles. Your wife’s former colleague was forced out, and presumably your wife would have faced the same pressure if she weren’t on leave. How well does your wife trust this former colleague? It’s astonishingly unprofessional of the new manager to confide that she’s going to “package out” someone’s peer. If your wife suspects her former colleague made up, misunderstood, or dramatized what’s happening, she might want to discount it. But if this former colleague is reliable, her heads-up gives your wife time to prepare, even though it unfortunately also adds stress during her leave. Your wife could contact her former boss (depending on whether she trusts her) to say that she heard a new manager was hired and her peer left, and ask an open-ended question: Is there anything she should know or prepare for when she returns? She might not get a clear answer, but doing something rather than nothing might make her feel less powerless. And if she does get a clear answer, at least she can stop wondering. If the new manager does tell your wife they’re eliminating her job, she doesn’t have to accept the package immediately. She can try to negotiate for better severance and/or consult with an employment lawyer. If the new manager doesn’t fire her immediately, your wife should not bring up what she heard from her former colleague. It’s possible her new manager screwed up the restructuring badly enough that she realizes she needs your wife’s expertise, especially after her colleague quit, and won’t package her out after all. —Laura More Advice From Slate I had the opportunity to meet the VP of my department in person for the first time last week. He is my supervisor’s boss, but still overall my boss. We have been working together on a challenging project for the past two years. He indicated that due to my performance I would be getting an early bonus from my employer and then he also gave me a personal check… Advice Workplace Jobs