Posted on 03/05/2018 9:13:38 AM PST by Morgana
Despite clear federal laws barring discrimination against pregnant workers, some corporations still unlawfully treat pregnant employees as if they are second-class citizens. In the latest case to make the news, Walmart refused to make a reasonable accommodation for pregnant employee Whitney Tomlinson in Atlanta after her doctor directed her to avoid heavy lifting for the duration of her pregnancy. Instead of accommodating the request by temporarily assigning her to a different department, Walmart’s human resources department told Tomlinson she needed to apply for unpaid leave from her job — leave she did not want and could not afford.
According to CNN, Walmart told Tomlinson she could not return to work until she was no longer pregnant, and applying for the unpaid leave was the only way to guarantee she would have a job when she came back. Per the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, which has been federal law for about 40 years, pregnant women are protected from workplace discrimination like the discrimination Tomlinson experienced at Walmart. The law seeks to protect women from being unjustly coerced or pressured into considering abortion as the result of economic pressure placed on a pregnant woman by an employer.
In 2014, Students for Life of America joined other pro-life organizations in filing an amicus brief supporting the plaintiff in a similar case against UPS that reached the Supreme Court. In that case, Peggy Young of Maryland was placed on unpaid leave by UPS after asking for a heavy lifting accommodation due to her pregnancy. Young ultimately reached a settlement with UPS and in the process garnered national attention to the troubling reality of pregnancy discrimination in the workplace.
While we recognize that it is wrong and unlawful to discriminate against pregnant women, we cannot pretend that such discrimination is surprising. Since abortion became widespread and commonplace in the 1970s, many have come to view preborn children as disposable and women as objects that exist for the pleasure and use by others and nothing more.
Keep up with the latest pro-life news and information on Twitter.
How can we then be surprised that pregnant women are treated as an inconvenience who can be plucked out of the workforce on a whim? The normalization of abortion comes hand-in-hand with the normalization of devaluing women in the workplace and devaluing their priceless role of carrying and raising new human life. From the beginning, the pro-life movement has adamantly insisted that pregnant women be reverenced and shown the dignity and respect they deserve as human beings.
The pro-life generation works toward a day when the dignity of mother and child are restored in practice and in law. The Pregnancy Discrimination Act was a start, but we will not fully recognize the rights and dignity of pregnant workers in America until we cease to treat the preborn children they carry as meaningless accessories that can be thrown away at will.
To this end, Students for Life of America’s Pregnant on Campus Initiative educates pregnant and parenting students about their rights under the law and works with schools to ensure that accommodations and resources are available for pregnant and parenting students. No student should have to choose between her education and carrying and raising a child, just as no pregnant worker should have to choose between her child and her job.
It’s rather ironic that in the context of a popular culture that claims to be oriented to women’s empowerment and respect for women’s choices that when the choice is life for a preborn baby, things get complicated. Mothers should not have to go to court to be accommodated during that brief and important time called pregnancy.
lifeping
When I first saw the headline, I did not think of this as an abortion issue, but as a problem where women get free health care and a salary while having a baby. Too many years in the military where some women used the pregnancy to get out of a lot of assignments.
And there was never talk of an abortion, because that would put them back at risk of the assignment.
Simple
Just give her a cash register job for awhile
Stupidity
Begin redefining jobs only some men are strong enough to do and quit hiring women to do those jobs!
Damn the feminizes to sue for the "right" to force women into jobs they are clearly not physically designed to do!!!
Honest physicians will gladly admit women do not have the physical make up to do certain things men can and do; while men clearly are limited at multi-tasking simple things women do with little to no effort.
Don't like it - take your complain up to God!
Why should you get paid if you don’t work? If a man breaks his leg, why should his employer pay him? He gets unemployment insurance and that is what pregnant women should get rather than more that men that can’t work. ?
Once a doctor notifies an employee about a medical condition (of any kind) that requires limitations in occupational duties, the employer has to act as if the employee is an enormous risk for a work-related injury that would make the employer liable for substantial damages.
Cash register jobs at these big-box retailers require heavy lifting.
I can’t get that sort of job at Wally World because I can’t perform the duties it requires. Mainly standing, walking, and lifting.
For that reason, Wally World doesn’t give me paychecks.
Why does a business have to pay someone who can’t do the job, if she’s pregnant?
maybe she’s not qualified to be a cashier. so, not so simple.
perhaps she’s in a warehouse/stocker position, where no reasonable accommodation can be made for an employee not being able to lift anything.
Just give her a cash register job for awhile
****************
You assume this is a retail outlet type store. But Walmart has
warehouse facilities where items are stored in bulb for distribution to
retail outlets. This article is unclear as to the type store involved.
If the woman required a lifting restriction, this assumes that she was having a complication of her pregnancy. The doctor did not want her lifting. Was she assessed by Walmart’s company physician also? If she could not lift more than 5lbs, that’s almost incompatible with normal every day activity, and she would be exposed to possible injury.
In a normal healthy pregnancy women are capable of performing normal day to day tasks until they’re close to delivery, then they are so big, they’re bouncing into things.
I think, we need more information on this. She did she need lifting restrictions?
Exactly.
In many companies if your doctor restricts your duties, you go on workers comp until cleared with a full release.
A pregnancy is no different...
The whole idea of Roe vs Wade was Jane roe was getting fired from her job because she was pregnant. She could not get an abortion. All Roe did was win her the right to kill her baby not keep her job. This is what wal mart et al wants her to do, kill her baby to keep her job. To them money comes before anything else. The baby be damned. Had Roe vs wade really been about women’s rights it would have been about women not losing a job while being pregnant.
>>Cash register jobs at these big-box retailers require heavy lifting.
<<
At both Target and WM I have seen wheelchair-bound individuals that clearly cannot lift anything heavy working the registers.
So pregnancy CAN be accommodated.
What kind of job did she have that required heavy lifting? Couldn’t they have her stocking shelves?
I’ve worked at wal mart! There are other jobs they could give her Wal Mart just likes to be difficult! She’s pregnant and they don’t want to be responsible if she miscarriages. They consider her a potential liability and want the problem removed. They will settle this out of court but to them it’s cheaper than if she lost the baby on their site.
That would work if she didn’t she said she didn’t intentionally get pregnant (I don’t know what happened but there I was, pregnant). I mean if a guy breaks his leg I’m sure he didn’t do it intentionally. So in this case maybe UI? Disability?
I’m guessing that after a group CPR session, the Walmart legal department immediately notified the manager to reassign the employee to a job that doesn’t require lifting.
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