Remember how Katherine Heigl's character in "Knocked Up" hid her pregnancy for a while because she was afraid of how the folks at work would react? If only she'd known she couldn't have been canned or demoted, thanks to the 30-year-old Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA), which says moms-to-be "must be treated in the same manner as other applicants or employees with similar abilities or limitations."Great -- except it seems like lately an awful lot of employers are ignoring the rule. A new study found the number of pregnancy-discrimination complaints is growing faster than a fetus.
Data collected by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) shows the number of charges has increased 65 percent from 1992 to 2007. While there's no clear reason for the jump, cases have included pregnant women being denied a job or a promotion.
And complaints have soared particularly for women of color, by 76 percent according to the EEOC. That's compared to a 25 percent overall jump during the same time period.
The reason for the high incidence of complaints logged by black mothers might be due to their pregnancy rates, which are two-thirds higher than the rate for non-Hispanic white women according to the CDC. And in 2003, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that black mothers with children under 18 years of age (78 percent) are now more likely than white mothers (70 percent) to be in the labor force.
Good thing the National Partnership for Women & Families has a plan to school these clueless employers. It includes probing the complaint breakdown by race, state and industry, and launching a nationwide enforcement and public education initiative.
Tell us: Were you ever discriminated against at work while with child?
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Friday 14 November
By Christina D
I certainly have! When I was pregnant with my first child, I was promised that I was going to be promoted to a level 2 technician... I told them I was pregnant shortly after, and suddenly all these "new" qualification procedures started showing up, to avoid promoting me. I passed the qualification requirements and they still refused to promote me. Then I started having horrible morning sickness and I was unable to work at all some days, and the other days it was really hard to talk on the phone, so I asked that I do chat work instead. Instead of understanding that I had a problem with this morning sickness, they wouldn't promote me and continued to insist that I make the goals that i had been making before I was sick. And on the phone only.
When I finally complained, they stuck to the "well, you've been missing work and so we can't promote you" thing and "we'd have to demote you for missing work, even if we did", but there was another tech 2 that was sick all the time and was out many days of the week that still retained his tech 2 status. It was bullcrap and it made me so mad. Finally they did promote me... shortly before I gave birth. I missed out on a lot of extra money from that and it was very ridiculous. I should have pursued it, but they kept insisting that it wasn't because I was pregnant. I no longer work there, but I wish I had done something sooner.
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Friday 14 November
By nic
everyone knows it won't be the pregnancy o r illness, or change in religion that will get you fired- just all of a sudden behaviour that was acceptable or praiseworthy for years will be looked at harder and evaluations and appraisals will go down and you'll be fired 'for cause' that will have nothing to do with your religion, pregnancy or illness...
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