Republicans are all about keeping women pregnant. Making sure they can keep their jobs while pregnant, not so much. The
Pregnant Workers Fairness Act isn't exactly speeding through Congress, even though
discrimination against pregnant women is common:
Amy Crosby, 30, was 23 weeks pregnant when her doctor told her she needed to quit all heavy lifting until she delivered. The pregnancy was exacerbating her carpal tunnel syndrome. "I couldn't sleep at night because my arm and my hand were numb," she told BuzzFeed. But, she said, her employers at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital, where she worked as a cleaner, told her she couldn't work with a lifting restriction. She'd have to go on unpaid leave, and said she's now slated to be fired — the month before her baby is born.
Crosby isn't alone. Under current law, employers who refuse to make accommodations for pregnant women that they would make for workers with disabilities are guilty of discrimination. But according to Emily Martin of the National Women's Law Center, which is filing a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on Crosby's behalf, employers still commonly fire pregnant women rather than providing such accommodations.
And more:
- Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter has once again been an asshole and a corporate running dog, vetoing a paid sick leave measure that is just one vote short of being able to override his veto.
- When a new management company took over the Hilton Mission Valley hotel, UNITE HERE was able to get the company to keep all of the hotel's union workers. Only the next move from Evolution Hospitality was to insist that all the workers go through E-Verify—and nine are now in danger of being fired from the jobs they've held for more than a year. The union is planning a five-day hunger strike and other events in solidarity with the workers.
- Major retailers have a major database of workers believed to have stolen merchandise, which is used to avoid hiring those workers across not just stores but chains. Problem is, the accuracy of the database is problematic, workers may have been put in it based on coerced and false confessions, and there's little way to get out of it if you shouldn't be in it.
- Not again, Michigan! Michigan Republicans are planning still more legislative assaults on unions.
- Really, Jonathan Chait?