Fired for taking Maternity Leave!

[Jaundice James]

Maternity leave? Leave!

"There currently is a plague set upon the female workers of this country. This plague is one of women being fired while on maternity leave. As worker rights go, and especially as woman’s rights go, I can hardly think of anything as heinous as this...

I know a woman who had her position phased out during her maternity leave after eight years of service to her company. She worked in the marketing department – a marketing department which was partially employed in what I like to call “internal marketing.”

Her company tasks their marketing department, in addition to outside marketing, with convincing their own employees of how well they’re being treated. They have an internal marketing plan. “People” is their battle cry. “Our people are our greatest asset”, or so they say... "

http://corporatecorruptionchronicle.com/2010/06/03/maternity-leave-leave/

Thanks for reading my new website and please pass it around.

-JJ

[sandnsea]

1. That used to be the norm

You were lucky if you got to keep your job and most working women pretty much knew they would be looking for new employment if they got pregnant. Perhaps some executives had a little more security, but they could be moved out too with no legal protections at all. Nobody considered it anywhere near heinous, or even considered it at all really. It was nice to get legal protection under Clinton, even though we didn't get guaranteed pay or a government allotment like some countries have.

[PDJane]

2. It's happened here, too.

I know a firm that was sued to hell and gone over doing just that. Serves them right.

[southerncrone]

3. What happened to the Family Leave Act that Clinton instated?

[brewens]

4. I work for a company where it's pretty clear that a couple of

young women took full time jobs, when their real goal was to qualify for benefits and have a baby. One of them told her friends at work that was her plan. One of two I know of that used all their maternity leave, telling our HR people they were going to return to work, and then never came back.
Another was pregnant three times in her first two years. She lost one of the baby's, but was off work on maternity leave for the maximum allowed twice. I wasn't at her job interview, but I'm pretty sure she didn't indicate that was her intention. It sure didn't look like she wanted to work full time.
Firing someone after eight years for taking maternity leave is wrong. The family medical leave act can be abused though.

[cornermouse]

6. How dare they take their full maternity leave?

We all know women live for the opportunity to swell up like an elephant and go through what for most of them is a considerable amount of pain over an extended period of time to have a baby in order to get to those, what, 12 weeks of being home without any income? And why would she have needed any time off at all to grieve for a baby that she lost?
:sarcasm:

[brewens]

8. One of the women I mentioned wasn't even interested in a

permanent relationship with her boyfriend. She just wanted a baby. Had no interest whatsoever in continuing to work for the company.
She told a couple co-workers she wasn't coming back. She actually moved from Idaho, back to Pennsylvania where she was from, and continued to collect her checks. Only when she had used all her sick leave and was scheduled to return to work, and never came back, did our HR people know we needed to hire someone else.
It's a job on a mobile blood drive team. There are considerable training costs, and it takes at least eight weeks to replace someone. None of the other women I work with were impressed with how she gamed the system. It's people like that that make it difficult for the rest of us to get or keep our benefits.
Since I've been with the company we've had a couple women that have been there five years or more, have baby's and go on maternity leave. No one has any problem with that. That's what the FMLA is for.

[Scuba]

7. Wow, taking a job to earn benefits...

...while the rest of us just do it for altruistic reasons.

[caledesi]

5. Hello? It is 2010! nt

[gels]

9. I was fired while on Short -Term Disability

AND while on FLMA!!!! I was due to return to work 9 days after I was terminated. Then they denied unemployment! I won on appeal, but the moral of this story is don't get sick, hurt or pregnant while you have a job.

[midnight]

10. K&R. Time to give women and men who take care of their families and have to

leave the work force economic credits.....