Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA)

The law is very clear: you can’t fire a woman simply because she’s pregnant.  You can’t force her onto unpaid “medical” leave when she’s capable of doing her job. You can’t discriminate against her, period, even if your customers would prefer not seeing pregnant women in the workplace.  You have to treat her as well as you treat other workers who are similar in their ability or inability to work. 

Yet despite these basic black-letter rules—enshrined thirty-five years ago in the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA)—employers often violate them, especially when it comes to pregnant women in low-wage jobs—women who have the fewest resources to fall back on if they lose their paychecks and the most difficulty finding help to enforce the laws that protect them. Read more »

Peggy Young was a UPS truck driver. When employees at her jobsite needed changes to their job duties because they had a disability, or an on-the-job injury, or even a D.U.I. conviction that prevented them from driving legally, UPS provided it. However, when she asked for light duty in order to avoid heavy lifting for a few months because she was pregnant, her employer refused and forced her onto unpaid leave for the duration of her pregnancy. Unfortunately, last week the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals held in United Parcel Service, Inc. v. Young, that in doing so, UPS did not violate the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA), despite the PDA’s requirement that employers treat pregnant employees the same as other employees who are “similar in their ability or inability to work.” The court held that taking this language literally would “transform an antidiscrimination statute into a requirement to provide accommodation to pregnant employees” and concluded that Congress did not intend this result. It came to this conclusion even though in passing the PDA, Congress stated, “[W]hen pregnant women are not able to work for medical reasons, they must be accorded the same rights, leave privileges and other benefits, as other workers who are disabled from working.”

The Fourth Circuit’s decision is extremely troubling, but to quote an aptly-titled article on the decision, Pregnancy Bias Fight Not Over, Despite 4th Circ. Ruling. The article notes that because the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was expanded in 2008 to require employers to provide accommodations to workers with temporary disabilities, employers may be “guilty of discrimination for not providing pregnant workers the same accommodations” when they have similar temporary restrictions on their ability to work. Read more »

When I saw the headlines recently about Kate Middleton being rushed to the hospital for treatment of hyperemesis gravidarum, a severe pregnancy-related complication, I immediately thought of my mother.

When I was three and my mom was pregnant with my brother, she was very sick. I was too young to really understand it, but I did know that she was throwing up nonstop and that every day a woman came to give her an I.V. What she was suffering from was more than morning sickness: it was hyperemesis. The I.V. my mother got prevented her from becoming too dehydrated or malnourished while her body literally could not keep down any food, and she was on bedrest for months.

Although we didn’t have the same resources available to Kate Middleton, whose hyperemesis is currently making international news, my mother was still luckier than many women who are diagnosed with this condition. She worked at a medical school library, and her supervisors accommodated her need for leave and gave her a reduced schedule once she was able to return to work. Women like Saonarah Jeudy have not been so lucky.

Jeudy was working as a prison guard when she became pregnant. Not only did she suffer from hyperemesis, she also had painful fibroid tumors. Read more »

Arjun Sethi and NWLC’s recent article on CNN.com describes pregnant workers’ struggles to hold onto their jobs and have healthy pregnancies, after their requests for minor adjustments to their job duties – adjustments they needed to continue safely working during pregnancy – were denied by their employers. These workers had the audacity to ask for permission to: carry a water bottle, have a stool to sit down, avoid lifting heavy objects, and take bathroom breaks.

For those of us who are lucky enough to work in places that routinely accommodate such requests, or where we don’t have to ask to go to the bathroom or get a drink of water, it can be hard to imagine what it’s like to be pregnant and get fired for following doctor’s orders to stay hydrated, off our feet or follow a lifting restriction.

But that’s exactly what’s happening to some pregnant workers in physically demanding and nontraditional jobs. All too often, employers are quite willing to provide an accommodation to a worker who is injured on the job or has a disability, but insist on denying an accommodation to a pregnant worker. Read more »

As the Huffington Post highlighted last week, the EEOC has filed a recent spate of pregnancy discrimination lawsuits. One case is against an employer that had a written policy requiring termination of pregnant employees in their third month of pregnancy. In another, an employer required pregnant workers to submit a note from their doctors in order to continue working during pregnancy. These rules seem like a throwback to when pregnant women were expected to quit work as soon as they began to “show.” But this kind of discrimination is still happening today, almost 35 years after the passage of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act.

Too many employers still seem to be relying on an outdated personnel manual. In fact, the past 10 years have seen a significant uptick in claims of pregnancy discrimination. Some employers continue to blatantly discriminate by firing pregnant workers, especially those in physically demanding jobs. Others are a bit more subtle in forcing pregnant women out of the workplace: they refuse to make minor adjustments to job duties for those workers who need such accommodations to continue safely working.

The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, recently introduced in Congress, would make a big difference. The bill would strengthen the protections in the Pregnancy Discrimination Act by requiring employers to make the same sort of reasonable accommodations for pregnancy that they are already required to make for disabilities. Read more »

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. Read more »

The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act was introduced in the Senate today.

When I tell people about the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, they are often taken aback that there is a need for this legislation. I get it: it seems like common sense that employees should not be punished for needing medical accommodations like more frequent breaks to drink water, or a stool to sit on behind a cash register.

Yet, stories from across the country make clear that pregnant workers desperately need the protections offered by the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which would require that employers provide reasonable accommodations to employees for pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical accommodations, just as they do now for employees with disabilities. Pregnant workers have been forced onto unpaid leave – or even fired – simply for asking for accommodations like a bathroom or water break. When pregnant workers have challenged these decisions in court, they have lost. This is because courts have held that the Pregnancy Discrimination Act does not explicitly require employers to provide accommodations for pregnant workers – a loophole the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act would close. Read more »

Heather got fired from Wal-Mart for carrying a water bottle.

Natasha was forced onto unpaid leave and then fired because her district manager at Rent-A-Center found out she needed help with occasional heavy lifting on the sales floor.

Sarah* lost her job at a fast food restaurant for taking bathroom and water breaks.

What do all of these women have in common? They were all pregnant.

All they needed were minor adjustments to continue safely working during pregnancy.  They didn’t get these adjustments.  And they all lost their jobs because of it.

The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act would put an end to this absurdity. Senators Bob Casey and Jeanne Shaheen will introduce the bill in the U.S. Senate today. Representative Jerrold Nadler introduced the PWFA in the U.S. House of Representatives in May, and it now has more than 100 co-sponsors. Public health organizations, business organizations, women’s organizations, worker organizations, and religious groups have lined up in support as well.

The PWFA would make it illegal to fire a pregnant employee who requests a reasonable accommodation – such as a water break, bathroom break, or modification of a lifting requirement. Pregnant workers would have the same rights to temporary accommodations on the job that are available to workers with disabilities.

Why do we need this bill? Stories like the ones above sound like they are from the Dark Ages, right? Before the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 made it illegal to discriminate against pregnant workers, women were expected to quit their jobs when they became pregnant. Back then, pregnancy was widely regarded as a disabling condition. Read more »

On Monday, the news broke that a pregnant woman is now leading a Fortune 500 company—an important and exciting milestone. Before being appointed CEO of Yahoo this week, Marissa Mayer disclosed her pregnancy to Yahoo’s Board. When she announced her pregnancy publicly on Monday, she praised the Board for its “evolved thinking” in hiring her anyway – that is, for not violating the Pregnancy Discrimination Act.

I’m not so sure following the law is all that praiseworthy, but here’s what made me cringe as I read the otherwise great news of a pregnant woman breaking through the glass ceiling:

Mayer told Forbes, “My maternity leave will be a few weeks long and I’ll work throughout it.”

I’m picturing a phalanx of 24/7 baby nurses, a state-of-the-art high-tech home office located in a spacious and sunny corner of a beautiful nursery, an in-house lactation consultant, a personal chef, and, don’t forget the personal trainer! As the CEO, Mayer will be free to telecommute to her heart’s content, which is not at all the situation for most working women. Read more »

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 »