A highly paid leader of the Health Services Union who cashed out 12 weeks’ maternity leave as a salary top-up has been accused of damaging the foundations of an important entitlement that gives time off for working mothers. Diana Asmar, the highest-paid union official in Australia at the time, took the $25,975 entitlement as cash rather than using it as leave in the 2015 financial year. Ms Asmar, elected secretary of the Victoria-based HSU No 1 branch with the key backing of federal Labor leader Bill Shorten, also cashed out $24,035 of annual leave in the same year. As a result, Ms Asmar took no leave. But total leave payouts added $50,000 to her salary, which was then almost $180,000, according to financial reports. Ms Asmar had recently given birth to her second child. Experts on women’s employment say the maternity leave payout is unprecedented, and undermines a hard-fought entitlement for women in the workforce that was intended as time off — never as a “double-dip” cash bonus. Senior union officials are also disturbed about Ms Asmar’s payout, saying it devalues the entitlement if a child’s birth can be used to extract extra cash from an employer — in this case a union.
