How to Stop Pregnancy Discrimination

Pregnancy Discrimination
Schreiber and Young’s (2015) “Illinois Releases Pregnancy Accommodation Proposed Rules” and Smith and Tischler’s (2014) “Accommodations under the Pregnancy Discrimination Act” both examine workplace rules regarding pregnancy for workers. Smith and Tischler look at some of the problems associated with the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) and the challenges that employers runs into when attempting to follow it while also staying compliant with Equal Opportunity laws. Schreiber and Young look at rules proposed by the state of Illinois regarding pregnancy discrimination in the workplace. This paper will compare and contrast the two to find where similarities and differences exist.
Smith and Tischler (2014) point out that the PDA applies to any company the employees 15 or more workers and is an expansion of the Civil Rights Act in that it includes workers who are impacted by pregnancy or childbirth. In short, the PDA affirms that an employer may not discriminate against a worker, a potential hire, a person eligible for a promotion and so on, because she is pregnant or has given birth to a child. However, the employer is not under any obligation to provide an extended period of leave for pregnancy—but the Family Medical Leave Act does address that issue, so it is not necessary for it to be included in the PDA.
Essentially, the PDA states that an employer may not treat an employee who is pregnant any differently than any other employee. The PDA does protect the woman’s right to breastfeed and/or engage in any other activity that is necessitated by pregnancy or childbirth. Thus, Smith and Tischler (2014) give the example of the woman who is breastfeeding at work: the employer may not discriminate against her for doing so because it is related to being pregnant and having a child. The workplace must accommodate her need to having a nursing schedule and so on. If it does not, it can be sued for discrimination on the basis of sex.
An employer is required to make sure the pregnant worker is treated in the same manner another worker who has limited abilities would be treated—i.e., lighter workload, leave of absence, and medical benefits (Smith & Tischler, 2014). The employer would have to establish a policy that can be applied to one and all workers regarding leave, if leave of absence is going to be offered. So if a male employee is allowed to take up to a year off to deal with a health issue, the same amount of leave time must be offered to the pregnant woman (Smith & Tischler, 2014).
When the employer has 50 or more employees, the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) applies. According to the FMLA, pregnant workers are granted up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave (Smith & Tischler, 2014). The employer is not permitted to terminate a pregnant worker because she is pregnant. If an employer does terminate a pregnant employee, he must be cautious about doing so and be certain that it is not for reasons related to her sex—otherwise, he opens himself up to the possibility of a law suit for discrimination.
Under the Equal Opportunity Act, the employer is not required to treat a pregnant worker any differently than any other worker is treated. However, if the employer offers leave or some other benefits to workers who suffer from a health condition, those same terms must be offered to the pregnant woman, as her condition is also viewed as a health condition (Smith & Tishcler, 2014).
The article by Schreiber and Young (2015) differs somewhat from the article by Smith and Tischler (2014) in that it deals with proposed rule changes rather than what already exist as rules. The proposed rule changes take into consideration issues that may stem from pregnancy and childbirth, such as postpartum depression, preeclampsia, gestational diabetes, miscarriage and so on. The proposals call for reasonable accommodations for conditions and situations such as these, and the accommodations recommended include:
· adjustments to a job application process;
· part-time employment status;
· modified work schedule;
· modified job structure or job assignment
and a variety of other accommodations as well (Schreiber & Young, 2015). The proposal also calls for employers to provide time off, which is not necessarily going to be a law under the PDA, as Smith and Tischler (2014) point out. Thus, the proposal in Illinois is focused on obliging employers to be more accommodating specifically to female workers who are pregnant. The law proposal is not situated in the concept of equality or equity in the workplace. On the contrary, its aim is to ensure that pregnant workers have special privileges that are related to their specific condition. The proposal is thus in and of itself an acknowledgement of the difference between male and female workers and the fact that female workers who become pregnant require time away from work to deal with their burden.
However, the proposal also states that “an employer need not offer an employee an accommodation if the accommodation would result in an undue hardship to the employer” (Schreiber & Young, 2015, p. 52). This means an employer does have the option of finding a loophole—so long as he can show that a burden of undue hardship would exist. Though the employer may think it is easy to show undue hardship, the reality is that unless there really is undue hardship it is difficult to prove. Thus, the employer is unlikely to be able to use this as a loophole and only in cases where undue hardship actually does exist.
All in all, the proposed law in Illinois is designed to protect the fringe benefits of the pregnant worker (Schreiber & Young, 2015). For this reason, the proposal can be considered an extension of the PDA described by Smith and Tischler (2014). The difference between the two articles is thus situated in their focus: Smith and Tischler look at laws that have already been passed; Schreiber and Young (2015) look at laws that are not yet on the books but that could be soon in order to further protect the rights of pregnant workers.
The articles are similar in the sense that they both look at and discuss pregnancy discrimination issues in the workplace. However, the article by Smith and Tischler (2014) focuses primarily on what employers need to be concerned about in order to comply with the PDA, while the article by Schreiber Young (2015) focuses on the issues that are going to be of more concern to the pregnant worker and what further accommodations should be guaranteed or protected by law in the state of Illinois. Both articles indicate that when it comes to pregnant workers, they should be treated at the very least in the same way as other disabled workers might be treated; though they should also receive some fringe benefits as well, because of the uniqueness of their condition and burden.
References
Schreiber, P. & Young, A. (2015). Illinois Releases Pregnancy Accommodation Proposed Rules. Employee Relations Law Journal, 41(3), 50-53.
Smith, K. J., & Tischler, R. J. (2014). Accommodations under the Pregnancy Discrimination Act. Employment Relations Today, 41(3), 81-86.