Employment

Yesterday, the 100th co-sponsor in the House of Representatives, Grace Napolitano (D-CA), signed on in support of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act would ensure that employers provide pregnant workers with simple accommodations if they need them to safely continue working during pregnancy.

The National Women’s Law Center is grateful to all of the bill’s co-sponsors for supporting this important piece of legislation.

So why is it so important?

To answer that question, today I asked Dr. Maureen Perry-Jenkins what happens to low-wage working women when they can’t get simple accommodations that they need during their pregnancies. Dr. Perry-Jenkins is a researcher at the University of Massachusetts conducting a federally-funded study of low-wage working families across the transition to parenthood.

Here’s her answer: All too often, pregnant low-wage workers wind up out of a job.

It is common for women in Dr. Perry-Jenkins’ studies to report they felt they had no choice other than to quit their physically demanding jobs in those instances when their pregnancies no longer permitted them to stand for long periods of time, lift heavy objects or work very long shifts with no break. Read more »

The Atlantic’s recent article, “Why Women Still Can’t Have it All,” has unsurprisingly generated quite a commotion. Critics and supporters have all given their two cents on Anne-Marie Slaughter’s look at work/family balance for women today – including us. One often-voiced concern over working parents (well, mostly working moms) is the impact of their careers on their children.

As a daughter of a woman who juggled work and family, I am wary of arguments that push moms out of the workplace for fear of raising maladjusted children. Yes, my mother went back to work two weeks after I was born. Yes, she went on long business trips when I was pre-school age, leaving my brother and me to pizza and movie nights with our dad. Yes, I took public buses home in middle school since there was no one to drive me. And yes, these experiences made me the young woman I am today.

It’s not despite her career that I ended up with good grades, a close mother-daughter relationship and high career ambitions, it’s because of it.   Read more »

This morning the Senate took to the floor to debate the Paycheck Fairness Act (PFA), a bill that would give workers stronger tools to combat wage discrimination, bar retaliation against workers for discussing salary information, and ensure full compensation for victims of gender-based pay discrimination. This afternoon the PFA failed to garner the 60 votes needed to end debate in a 52-47 vote that stuck to party lines.

While I was watching the debate, numerous Senators spoke in support of the PFA. They spoke to the many issues that matter in this fight – the (obvious) reasons women should be paid fairly, how we can boost women’s economic security by passing the PFA, how fair pay for women is good for families, and more. Senator Durbin made a point that particularly resonated with me. He simply said: protection for women and their families used to be bipartisan.

This clearly should be a bipartisan issue. The fact of the matter is that the typical woman working full time, year round is still paid just 77 cents for every dollar paid to her male counterpart, a figure that has barely budged over the last decade. Part of this 23 cent difference can be explained by occupations, work hours, and experience. But the truth of the matter is – much of the wage gap is entirely unaccounted for by these factors, and court cases show that discrimination continues to play a significant role in the wage gap. Read more »

Who knew we needed a law to protect pregnant women from being fired for taking a bathroom break or drinking water on the job? Speakers at today’s press conference after the introduction of the Pregnancy Workers Fairness Act (PWFA) highlighted the reality many women face in ultimately having to choose between a healthy pregnancy and their job.

At the press conference bill sponsor, Representative Nadler (D-NY), described cases where the law has failed to protect pregnant workers. Rep. Nadler stated what should be the obvious: that the economic devastation of a pregnant woman losing her job impacts not only her, but her family and the employer as well.

NWLC’s Emily Martin spoke at the conference. Martin explained how some courts have limited the protections set out in current law, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA).

Martin, pictured above, described the gap courts have created between the PDA and Americans with Disabilities Act, which leaves pregnant workers unprotected when they need accommodations during ordinary pregnancy, such as avoiding lifting heavy objects in the last 6 weeks. The result, Martin explained, is that women “are losing their jobs because employers refuse to make temporary modifications to allow women to perform their jobs safely.”

A pregnant woman’s job shouldn’t depend on her willingness to ignore her doctor’s advice. But many women face just this choice, particularly women working in physically demanding jobs. When an employer refuses to accommodate, say, a request to shift job duties so a pregnant worker can avoid lifting more than twenty pounds for a few months, the worker will often lose her job (and possibly her health insurance), at the worst possible moment for her family. Today, Representative Nadler (D-NY) and more than 60 cosponsors introduced the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA), a bill that would ensure women are no longer forced into this impossible position.

The PWFA provides that employers must make reasonable accommodations when employees have limitations related to pregnancy or childbirth and when these accommodations do not pose an undue hardship to employers. In other words, it requires employers to provide pregnant workers the exact same sort of accommodations they already provide employees with disabilities under the Americans with Disabilities Act. In the absence of the PWFA, courts have often rejected the claims of women whose employers fired them when they sought modifications that would allow them to continue to do their jobs.  Read more »

Two steps forward, one step back. That’s the story of the recovery for women.

Our analysis of April’s monthly jobs data brought fairly positive news for women, who gained 73 percent of the 115,000 jobs last month, the largest share of monthly job gains for women since the start of the recovery. But the total monthly job gains in April were the lowest in 2012. And the story for women during the recovery overall isn’t as rosy.

Women have gained only 16 percent of the nearly 2.5 million jobs added during the recovery, and their slow gains are driven largely by public sector losses. In fact, for every two jobs women gained in the private sector during the recovery, they lost one in the public sector. Men also have lost public sector jobs during the recovery, but their public sector job losses are smaller both in absolute terms and relative to their private sector job gains, as the chart below shows.

Other fast facts you should know:

• Unemployment rates dropped slightly. April brought a slight decrease in the unemployment rate to 8.1 percent overall. Men’s unemployment rate also dropped slightly, to 7.5 percent. However, the unemployment rate for women held steady at 7.4 percent. The decreases in the unemployment rates are largely due to people leaving the labor force.

Help Close the Pregnancy Loophole!

Tell your Representative to co-sponsor the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act to ensure that pregnant women are treated fairly on the job.

Call (202) 224-3121 today!

Yes it's true: In 2012, getting pregnant can still cost you your job.

Thanks to a gap opened between discrimination laws and disability laws by court decisions, some employers are refusing to accommodate even simple requests that help workers maintain a healthy pregnancy.

Here are three startling examples of women who, thanks to the pregnancy loophole, were fired for doing what was best for their pregnancies:

• A retail sales associate in Salina, Kansas was fired for drinking water while working because it violated store policy.
• A nursing home activities director in Valparaiso, Indiana lost her job because she could no longer lift heavy tables, an activity that took up less than 10 minutes of her workday and with which her coworkers routinely volunteered to assist.
• A pregnant truck driver in Tennessee was instructed by her obstetrician not to lift more than 20 pounds and sought light duty work. Her employer terminated her, as it made such modifications only to those injured on the job.

Sounds crazy, right? Unfortunately, thousands of pregnant women are forced to choose between losing their jobs (or taking unpaid leave) and endangering their pregnancies, when just a few small workplace accommodations are usually all that's needed.

To close this egregious pregnancy loophole, Pregnant Workers Fairness Act was introduced today in the House of Representatives by Reps. Nadler (D-NY) and a number of his colleagues. To give this bill a solid start, we need as many Representatives to co-sponsor this bill as possible.

Will you take 3 minutes to call your Representative and ask them to co-sponsor the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act? Calling is easy to do. Read more »

It’s the first Friday of the month and we’re back with our analysis of this month’s jobs data. While the recovery isn’t yet in full swing for women, March’s jobs numbers brought some good news.

Here is what you should know:

• Unemployment rates dropped. March was the first month in which adult women’s unemployment rate (7.4 percent) was lower than their 7.6 percent unemployment rate at the start of the recovery in June 2009. Adult men’s unemployment rate was slightly higher than women’s in March (7.6 percent), but was down 2.3 percentage points since the recovery began.
• Adult black women’s unemployment rate remained above their rate at the start of the recovery. In March, adult black women’s unemployment rate was 12.3 percent, still higher than it was in June 2009 (11.6 percent). The unemployment rates for single moms, adult black men, and adult Hispanic men and women were lower than at the start of the recovery, but all had unemployment rates that remained well above the national average.

For the last decade, the wage gap for women has barely budged – the typical women who works full time, year round still only makes 77 cents for every dollar paid to her male counterpart. As highlighted by a recent Bloomberg Businessweek article, there is a gender wage gap in virtually all jobs. Out of 265 major occupations, women’s median salary only exceeded men’s in one – personal care workers. The wage gap also occurs at all education levels, after experience is taken into account, and it gets worse as women’s careers progress. All told, even when accounting for a number of factors that can be expected to impact wages, it still exists. In fact, recent research shows that more than 40 percent of the wage gap is still unexplained, even after considering educational background, occupation, industry, work experience, union status, and race.

Despite this evidence of persistent unfair pay, recent weeks have also seen two oddly optimistic articles about women’s earnings. Let’s see what they’re so excited about:

First, Anya Kamenetz tries to reconcile why women’s earnings haven’t increased while their levels of education have. She concludes that women’s earnings are falling behind because (1) they have kids, (2) they chose jobs that don’t pay well, and (3) they are not “bold” or assertive. The onus in her explanation falls for the most part on women themselves – though she notes the structural element of some of these pieces, her answer is largely about planning correctly and making different choices. Who knew it was so easy – women can just make different choices and they’ll be paid fairly! This answer ignores the fact that even women who aren’t mothers see a wage gap. It ignores the fact that “women’s” jobs pay less precisely because women chose them – because women’s work is devalued – and, as noted above, that women are paid less even when they do chose the same profession as men. It ignores the fact that women often get punished for being bold or assertive. And the idea that these women might face discrimination? Not even mentioned. Read more »

Manufacturing’s been on everyone’s lips lately.  Economists are extolling its recent growth and policy makers, both Democrats and Republicans, are suggesting we should promote it further.

But NWLC’s new report, A “Man”ufacturing Comeback:  Men’s and Women’s Employment Gains and Losses in 2011 has a few facts about manufacturing that no one’s mentioned yet:

MANuFACTuring statistic #1: In 2011 manufacturing employment increased for the first time in more than a decade, with annual average employment rising by 205,000 jobs.  Unfortunately, women did not share in these gains.  In fact, between 2010 and 2011 men’s annual average employment in manufacturing increased by 230,000 jobs while women’s dropped by 25,000 jobs.  This divergence was a change from the trend during the recession, when the declines in manufacturing employment were borne proportionately by women and men.