Five Fast Facts about Pregnancy in the Workplace

The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act was introduced in the Senate last week. To help you learn more about the legislation and why it’s critically important to pregnant workers, here are five fast facts about pregnancy and the workplace.

1) Neither the Pregnancy Discrimination Act nor the Americans with Disabilities Act explicitly require employers to provide minor workplace accommodations if pregnant employees need them.

While the Pregnancy Discrimination Act extends Title VII employment discrimination protections to pregnant employees, all too often courts have held that it does not protect women who need minor adjustments on the job during pregnancy, such as being permitted to carry a water bottle, take more frequent bathroom breaks, or get a temporary reprieve from heavy lifting — unless the pregnant woman can point to someone else doing exactly the same work who needed and received exactly the same job adjustments but who wasn't pregnant. It will often be impossible to find this nonpregnant identical twin. The Americans with Disabilities Act also doesn't apply, because pregnancy itself is not a disability (although pregnancy complications, like preeclampsia or gestational diabetes, can be).

2) The United States does not have a federal law requiring paid medical or parental leave.

Although the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) provides twelve weeks of unpaid leave during which your employer, if large enough to be covered by the law, will save your job, most employers don't provide paid medical or family leave, and very few workers in low-wage jobs have access to more than a few days of paid leave for medical needs. This means that if an employer won't accommodate a pregnant employee, she may have to make the difficult choice between going onto unpaid leave at a time she can't afford it and at the very moment she is likely saving her leave to use for her baby's birth (again, assuming her employer is even covered by the FMLA) or ignoring her doctor's orders and continuing to financially support herself and her family.

3) Women have been fired from their jobs for following doctor's orders.

Because they need accommodations as simple as taking bathroom breaks or having a stool to sit on behind a cash register, pregnant workers have been forced onto unpaid leave or fired.

4) Only about five percent of women in the workforce are pregnant in any given year.

Our analysis shows that only five percent of women in the workforce will be pregnant while working in any year — and of course many of these women will be able to work throughout their pregnancies without any sort of accommodations. Granting temporary accommodations to those few pregnant employees who need it will have a minimal impact on employers. This is particularly true because the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act incorporates the "reasonable accommodation" framework from the Americans with Disabilities Act, which is already very familiar to employers. In fact, providing workplace accommodations to pregnant workers is good for business. It allows employers to retain women workers, and reduces the high costs of turnover associated with replacing these employees.

5) Nearly three in five women who are pregnant will continue working during pregnancy.

Although the total number of pregnant employees in any given year is a small fraction of the workforce, most women today do work while pregnant. The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act is of utmost importance to these women — especially low-income women who are more likely to work in physically demanding jobs and workplaces with less flexible policies.

Urge your Senator to sign on as a co-sponsor of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act today.