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Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies

nytimes.com

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Re: Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies

#141

Post by tathougies »

untog wrote: post #19
Geeek wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The social and bioligical pressure*. I think we should strive to have equal maternity/paternity leave, but let’s not deny the origins of the current reality.

Why would fathers have biological pressure to spend less time with their children? I'd take five years paternity leave if I could get it.

Fathers face pressure to provide for their pregnant wife. I too would take five years off to look after babies. However, without a husband of my own, I cannot. The fact is that between my wife and I it makes more sense to invest in my career. We both graduated at the same time with the same degree. We both worked and earned the same salary. Then she wanted a baby. For the past two and a half years we’ve been dealing with very complicated pregnancies and my wife wants more babies. Okay, I love babies, but the fact is that while she could have worked had her pregnancies been easy, she cannot work now. Thus, I work because I am forced to provide for our family, not because I don’t want to spend time with babies. It’s just biological reality that no matter what we do there will be women like my wife who have complicated pregnancies and good men and husbands who will make the sacrifice of not spending time with children to ensure their children’s future. It’s not just about money and food. It’s about securing a place in society, which is not something any government welfare program can provide. Making business connections, colleague relationships, etc now will have a lasting impact on my family’s social status and it simply makes more sense for men to do that. Believe me, my wife and I would love for things to be different, but it really comes down to biology.

When I express my sadness that I have to work and can’t be with children all day long (same complaint my father and grandfather had), my wife often jokes that I should find a husband. It’s funny, but it’s ultimately true. Men are simply better able to do the sorts of things I take on in my family and women at the things my wife does

Re: Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies

#142

Post by existencebox »

tptacek wrote: post #75
tinbad wrote: post #14

Personally experienced it. Wife worked at Google, had always positive performance reviews. Come pregnancy time she informed her manager, 3 days later they put her on a performance improvement plan. It didn't take long for them to realize they were making a big mistake, risking an expensive lawsuit so they let it go and let her have her paid 12 month leave. After returning she got the choice to do the PIP or take seve…

My wife interviewed at Google and was asked how she'd be able to meet the requirements of the job while taking care of young children; the discrimination persists even after pregnancy.

There's something that has always nagged at me in these discussions, and I've always been somewhat afraid to bring it up lest I misconstrue, but I want to try and figure this out.

What's a state of affairs we can reach such that people don't become preemptively discriminatory for lack of being able to examine factors that would impact workplace performance? We agree, societally, that we shouldn't discriminate against parents. However, we don't live in a world where a business is spared the cost incurred by that. That's just not the pragmatic reality of employment in the US at this time, and my fear is that if unable to ask "do you have a good track record or gameplan for keeping up with the unique obligations of childbearing" we'll err on the side of paranoia in hiring, and the discrimination will occur in seeking to AVOID potential conflict or discrimination.

A govt stipend was one way I could see this, in that the business doesn't have to bear the cost and can offload work. I'd still be concerned that a business might be afraid about context switching/onboarding, but it's a step forward. Unfortunately, I don't even see that becoming a reality in a country where paternity leave is still the exception and not the rule.

There almost seems to be a "psychological game theory" question lodged in there, apologies if I was rambly in stating it.

Re: Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies

#143

Post by newfoundglory »

hotdog97 wrote: post #92
shkkmo wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you seem to be saying is that instead of looking for a job, pregnant women should rob a bank? Honestly, I have no idea what point you are trying to make. The logic of: "Babies are expensive, therefor I cannot stay unemployed for 6 months before I find a job" seems completely sound and reasonable to me. Where is that logic lacking? What practical alternative would you propose?

I explicitly wrote that I did not mean that , thinking that someone would inevitably misunderstand.

You may be trying to make a point, but you're not succeeding. A sarcastic guess: robbing banks makes money, and having a job makes money so having a job is logically equivalent to robbing banks and therefore being employed is bad.

Re: Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies

#144

Post by skizm »

Thought experiment: a scrappy startup is struggling to stay profitable, they literally (and not figuratively) can't afford their developers leaving for extended amounts of time and they are very upfront about this in interviews. Are they legally allowed to discriminate against candidates that are pregnant or expressed a desire to have children in the near future since it has the potential to kill their business if they hire them?

Re: Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies

#145

Post by roenxi »

tptacek wrote: post #82
hotdog97 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me answer this with a counter-question. If you're pregnant and somehow hiding it really well, do you think it makes sense for you to job-hunting six weeks before you're due to give birth?

Literally the only reason to tell a prospective employer about your pregnancy status is to enable them to unlawfully discriminate against you based on that status.

You are, obviously, completely correct on the point that you raise. However, I am sold on those sort of laws on the basis that employers are discriminating on irrelevant dimensions, like race and gender.

An employee expecting, or indeed planning, to take a X months leave Y months after joining, with X > Y, isn't an irrelevant dimension. Especially if parental leave is paid, but I don't know if that is how the US handles leave.

An employee literally cannot be a high quality, productive worker if they are not working. Employers should not be forced to ignore relevant factors when hiring. That isn't fair on them.

Re: Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies

#146

Post by lazyasciiart »

kuriho wrote: post #80
newfoundglory wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FUCK yes. Kids cost money. Jobs are how you get money. And I say this as someone who hired a woman who then told us she would give birth in two months, and we were fine.

Wow, that sounds like straight up fraud to me. Do companies in America get financial support from the government for employees on pregnancy leave?

Fraud is intentionally misrepresenting information in order to affect how the other party would act to cause a financial gain/loss. It is illegal for the other party to change how they act based on information about a pregnancy, therefore there is no legally admissible injury to the company. Legally, you're probably in about the same situation as a drug dealer accusing someone of stealing some of his goods - if you can prove that they actually caused you damages (ie: that you had a stash of drugs, or that you would deliberately not hire a candidate because they were pregnant), you're worse off than before.

Re: Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies

#147

Post by gamblor956 »

JungleGymSam wrote: post #90
tptacek wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally the only reason to tell a prospective employer about your pregnancy status is to enable them to unlawfully discriminate against you based on that status.

OK but why should a company hire someone if they are almost "immediately" going to be put on paid leave? edit: Yes, downvotes will change my mind. You're all doing a wonderful job and are definitely morally superior to me and I'm unworthy of your keystrokes.

Companies aren't required to make maternity leave available to new hires immediately, or to pay for it. They simply aren't allowed to make employment decisions based on pregnancy status or plans.

Re: Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies

#148

Post by lhorie »

Teever wrote: post #131
lhorie wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can only afford 10 people, you can usually also get by with 9. Even a healthy male full-time employee is a much bigger commitment financially to a company than just the salary number (i.e. you need to pay payroll taxes, insurance, benefits, equipment, recruiter fees, etc) If you're going to be stretched thin financially after hiring a single new person, you probably shouldn't be hiring.

> If you can only afford 10 people, you can usually also get by with 9. With that kind of logic why should the company even bother hiring a 10th person?

Because it has money in the bank, and it wants to invest it into growth.

Let's put it this way: if 9 people can only produce enough revenue to pay for themselves, it would be risky to take on a new large client if doing so required an upfront investment that completely depleted your cash reserves.

If things went south and you couldn't capitalize on your investment, you'd have no way to fund a pivot or a recovery strategy. If taking a new client only required a 10th of your bank and things went bad, it would still hurt but you'd have some breathing room. A new hire poses a similar risk.

Re: Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies

#149

Post by tptacek »

roenxi wrote: post #145
tptacek wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally the only reason to tell a prospective employer about your pregnancy status is to enable them to unlawfully discriminate against you based on that status.

You are, obviously, completely correct on the point that you raise. However, I am sold on those sort of laws on the basis that employers are discriminating on irrelevant dimensions, like race and gender. An employee expecting, or indeed planning , to take a X months leave Y months after joining, with X > Y, isn't an irrelevant dimension. Especially if parental leave is paid, but I don't know if that is how the US han…

While we're at it, why shouldn't any prospective employee with a health condition that might require extensive time off be required to disclose that? And, since people aren't often the best judge of their health conditions and the impositions they'll make on future employers, perhaps it'd be better if we all just disclosed our complete medical records along with our job applications.

Re: Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies

#150

Post by krschultz »

kuriho wrote: post #118
AchieveLife wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do companies you work at not hire employees for the long term?

They mainly hire people to replace others that quit/retired or to fill a new position created to support a team with a steadily growing workload. New hires are subject to a 3 month probation period during which both parties can end the contract at will. More than 80% of all positions are long term. I would hope that someone looking for a long term employment at a company would be honest and upfront with something lik…

I sure hope you are not involved with hiring at your company because your perspective on this is a great way to get sued into oblivion.

It's actually in your best interest as the hiring company to not find out if the person is pregnant or expecting to have a child. Let's say that you decided not to hire someone for a set of reasons unrelated to pregnancy, but along the way you asked the candidate if they were planning to get pregnant. Good luck proving that you didn't make the hiring decision on the basis of knowing they would take leave. Which of course is illegal under the Pregnancy Discrimination Act. This is why most companies make it a policy that you can not ask these kinds of questions so as not to taint the interview (even though technically it's not illegal to ask the questions, it's just illegal to use them as a basis for your decision).

As a candidate you might actually be acting more in the interest of the company to not tell them you are going to be having a child so as not to put them in that position? I honestly haven't thought through it that much so I could be convinced of a different opinion.

If you're planning to continue working after having a child, I think you should go about your career as if the pregnancy wasn't happening and just take the leave as appropriate. If that means you work 6 weeks before leave, so be it. You'll be back after leave to continue on.

What would the company do if instead of getting pregnant you got hit by a bus one day? I had to take 2 months of medical leave on 2 weeks notice when I got deathly ill, that was way less notice than a pregnancy. The startup I was at had only 12 people and they handled it. I'm unconvinced by all these arguments that it's too much of a hardship for companies to deal with their employees having a life.

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