Re: More Women Pursue Claims Of Pregnancy Discrimination

[toci]

On Mar 27, 2:09 pm, jim <jim10...@gmail.com> wrote:
> http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?guid=%7BC348817C%2D3...
>
> More Women Pursue Claims Of Pregnancy Discrimination
> By Sue Shellenbarger, The Wall Street Journal
> Last update: 9:47 p.m. EDT March 26, 2008
>
> A spike to record levels in pregnancy-discrimination complaints to
> regulators suggests more women are speaking up about suspected
> workplace bias.
>
> Pregnancy-bias complaints recorded by the Equal Employment Opportunity
> Commission surged 14% last year to 5,587, up 40% from a decade ago and
> the biggest annual increase in 13 years.
>
> And that "may be only the tip of the iceberg," an EEOC spokesman says.
> The agency also received 20,400 pregnancy-bias inquiries at its call
> center last year, the center's first full year of operation; that
> doesn't include thousands more walk-ins asking about the same topic at
> fair-employment offices. An advocacy group, 9to5, National Association
> of Working Women, also is seeing an increase in pregnancy-bias calls
> on its hotline.
>
> The groundswell reflects both changing demographics and a new activism
> among mothers. It also shows that even now, 30 years after passage of
> the federal Pregnancy Discrimination Act, there is still confusion
> about what protections it provides. "I thought we were protected,"
> said an advertising executive during a recent gathering of 100 working
> mothers. "Then I find out we can be fired while we're pregnant,
> employers can refuse to hire us -- what exactly are our rights?"
>
> Suspecting Bias
>
> For questions about pregnancy discrimination, see:
>
> *
> EEOC offices with links to state and local agencies:www.EEOC.gov/offices.html
> *
> 9to5 National Association of Working Women hotline: 800-522-0925
> *
> Women Employed hotline: 312-782-3902
> *
> EEOC hotline: 800-669-4000
>
> While employers can indeed fire, lay off or refuse to hire pregnant
> women, they can't single them out for worse treatment -- and they must
> be able to prove they held men to the same standards or asked male job
> candidates comparable questions. "Any action involving a pregnant
> woman has to be well-documented and well-justified," says Jocelyn Frye
> of the National Partnership for Women & Families, an advocacy group.
> "Nobody should be finding out on maternity leave that she has
> performance issues."
>
> Many women who bring complaints are surprised to learn that they don't
> have special protection from adverse treatment. One manager for a
> publishing company thought she was being discriminated against when
> her employer fired her for poor performance while pregnant, says
> Kimberlie Ryan, a Denver employment attorney. In fact, the manager
> couldn't prove her bosses knew she was pregnant when they decided to
> fire her, says Ms. Ryan. To succeed in a claim, a woman generally must
> be able to prove an adverse action was motivated by her pregnancy or
> her status as a mother.
>
> Many hotline callers also don't realize they aren't entitled by
> federal law to paid childbirth leave, says Melissa Josephs of Women
> Employed, an advocacy group that runs a hotline. (The federal
> family-leave law only guarantees covered employees unpaid leave; just
> California and Washington mandate paid leave.)
>
> Other callers spend weeks sorting out their rights, but ultimately
> drop their complaints. After successfully managing a staffing-agency
> office, Ashley Donahue says, she was told upon returning from
> maternity leave that her job had been "dissolved," only to see her
> duties assumed by a childless woman she had trained as her
> replacement. Ordered to train for an unfamiliar job in sales, the
> Baton Rouge, La., mother tried, but was written up repeatedly for poor
> performance against unreasonably tough objectives, she says.
> Discouraged, she resigned. She called 9to5 and the EEOC, and spent
> days studying the law and looking for a lawyer. Finally, although she
> was told she probably had a case, she decided she didn't want the
> hassle, and moved on to a new job.
>
> While a pregnant woman can legitimately be caught up in a downsizing,
> employers can't invent one as a pretext. A pregnant Denver
> human-resources manager was laid off and told she was part of a
> reduction-in-force, Ms. Ryan says. But after it became clear that the
> RIF totaled one person -- the pregnant woman -- the employer settled
> bias charges for a generous sum, she says.
>
> Employers can't justify adverse actions by using stereotypes, either,
> such as "now that you're pregnant, the best thing for you to do is go
> raise your kid," says Elizabeth Grossman, an EEOC regional attorney.
> Pregnancy-bias complaints are likely to continue rising. Among other
> advocacy groups, MomsRising.org, with 130,000 members, is using savvy
> organizing tactics to mount a public attack on what it calls "maternal
> profiling," or unfair treatment of women who have, or will have,
> children. In addition, women are working longer into pregnancy. And
> the latest generation of moms, raised in a post-Title IX world where
> equal treatment in school and sports was expected, are just assuming
> they will have equal rights at work, too.

In 1967, I told a job interviewer that I had found out I was
pregnant. She said I probably wouldn't want to work the night job
hours that the work entailed. That made sense to me. It made sense
to her, and I didn't get the job. I'm not sure I like our brave new
world. Toci