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Pay for family care and bonding

UC is committed to supporting faculty and staff who need time off to care for a family member or to bond with a new child. UC’s Pay for Family Care and Bonding (PFCB) program gives employees the option to replace some of the income they would otherwise lose during their approved Family and Medical Leave.

Understanding Pay for Family Care and Bonding

The PFCB pay option provides income replacement of 100% of eligible earnings for up to eight workweeks per calendar year to replace the income that employees would otherwise lose during an approved Family and Medical Leave taken for a qualifying reason.

Family and Medical Leave (FML) is job-protected leave provided by the University for specified family and medical reasons consistent with the federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), the California Family Rights Act (CFRA), and California’s Pregnancy Disability Leave Law (PDLL).

To qualify, the FML leave must be taken in a block of one workweek or more, for any of the following purposes:

  • Care for a family member with a serious health condition
  • Bonding with a new child
  • Military Caregiver Leave
  • Qualifying Exigency Leave 

PFCB is not an option if you’re taking FML for your own serious health condition or your pregnancy disability. 

Who’s eligible

To be eligible for PFCB, you must first be eligible and approved for Family Medical Leave under FMLA and/or CFRA. This requires that you have been employed by UC for at least a total of 12 months and that you have actually worked at least 1,250 hours during the 12 months immediately before the start of the leave.

To learn more about eligibility for Family and Medical Leave, see:

Employees on an approved block FML leave for one workweek or more for one of the qualifying reasons above may be eligible for PFCB. Most bargaining units are participating in PFCB. If you are a represented employee, please refer to your unit’s collective bargaining agreement.

How the program works

While FML may generally be taken as a block leave, intermittently, or by working a reduced schedule, PFCB is only an option if you take FML in a block of at least one workweek.

You may opt to use other forms of paid leave (such as sick leave, vacation or PTO) before or after using PFCB, but not at the same time. If you elect to use PFCB, you must continue to use PFCB until your qualifying FML block leave ends or you exhaust your full 8 workweeks of PFCB for the calendar year.

Note: If your FML ends before you have used the full 8 workweeks of PFCB for the calendar year, you may use the remainder if you have another qualifying FML block leave later in the calendar year.

Because there are so many factors to consider in planning your Family and Medical Leave, it can get complicated. Explore UC’s resources to understand how leave and pay provisions work together, but it’s also important to talk to the individual or office coordinating your leave as soon as possible.

Frequently asked questions

Learn more about how the program works.