Pregnant and Jobless: Pregnant Women Still Choose Between Paycheck and a Healthy Pregnancy
Pregnant and Jobless: Pregnant Women Still Choose Between Paycheck and a Healthy Pregnancy
Last year, Betzaida Cruz Cardona, a cashier for a large retail chain in Rochester, New York, was told to “stay home and take care of her pregnancy” after she brought in a doctor’s note with a 25-pound lifting restriction. Even though she rarely lifted anything heavier than 25 pounds as a cashier, Betzaida was fired when she was four months pregnant. The results were devastating: she wound up homeless and had to rely on family and friends for shelter.
Recently, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo stood up for thousands of women like Cardona by signing into law a bill guaranteeing reasonable accommodations for pregnant workers. While a critical step forward, freedom from pregnancy discrimination shouldn’t depend on location, or luck. On the 37th anniversary of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA), no woman should have to go through what Cardona did, and be forced to choose between her job and a healthy pregnancy, when reasonable accommodations are available.
Earlier this week, A Better Balance released its new report, “Pregnant and Jobless: 37 Years After Pregnancy Discrimination Act, Pregnant Women Still Choose Between A Paycheck and A Healthy Pregnancy,” which argues that the only way to ensure equal opportunity for all pregnant workers is for Congress to pass the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA). That’s because even after the Supreme Court weighed in last March, the rights of pregnant workers remain unclear, forcing too many women to jump through legal hoops to get basic accommodations to stay healthy and on the job.
Under the Supreme Court’s new standard in Young v. UPS, a pregnant worker denied accommodations must go through a multi-step evidentiary process to prove discrimination. She can likely do that by showing that a large percentage of non-pregnant workers are accommodated under a policy or practice, while only a small percentage of pregnant workers are afforded accommodations (assuming the employer’s justification is not “sufficiently strong” to justify the burden on pregnant workers).
For women like Peggy Young whose employer has transparent policies, it may be possible to prove discrimination—even if it takes months or years. But as we see up close at A Better Balance, too many women working in low-wage jobs are often unfamiliar with company policies (if there are any) and simply do not have the luxury of time and resources to prove discrimination. For example, one pregnant retail worker fainted and collapsed on the retail floor because her employer refused to allow her to drink water on the job. Why should any woman have to prove discrimination, and risk her health while amassing the evidence, in order to get such a basic accommodation?
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http://msmagazine.com/blog/2015/11/03/pregnant-and-jobless-pregnant-women-still-choose-between-paycheck-and-a-healthy-pregnancy/