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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

#211

Post by dilyevsky »

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 manager at said company once said to me that my planned paternity leave "is untimely" with a straight face.

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

#212

Post by MattLaroche »

tinbad wrote: post #66
habosa wrote: post #55

This area is really tough. I feel terrible for women who experience this bias, but the solution is not nearly as obvious as with race/gender/age/religious/etc discrimination. In those cases the answer is: stop being biased. Let's say you're a small company and you can really only afford to have Even if they both plan to have 2 kids in the next 4 years, it's a biological reality that it will take the woman away from w…

It wouldn't be much of a problem if there are better government organized programs in place. In fact, California's paid parental leave is funded by employees and is a relatively small tax of 0.9% (over the first $110k of wages only)[1] that includes other disability pay. [1] http://www.edd.ca.gov/Payroll_Taxes/Rates_-_Historical.htm

I'm glad CA's PFL program exists, and by American standards, it's very good.

But it only pays 60% of income, for 6 weeks, and up to a level under the salary of most in product-engineering-design in tech. Most tech companies true up salary above the PFL levels for those 6 weeks (and potentially pay 100% for more weeks), and in SF, truing up to 100% for those 6 weeks is required for companies above a certain size.

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

#213

Post by [deleted] »

giantsloth wrote: post #198
existencebox wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your statement of "recruit" is exactly the sort of misconstruction I was hoping to avoid. threatofrain got it right. This is a problem we need to address, but the solutions I've seen thus far don't take unfortunate pathologies of human psychology into account, and when we don't do that, we get very surprised at the lack of results down the line. You're more than willing to try to live in a world where you say "Becaus…

[flagged]

[deleted]

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

#214

Post by MattLaroche »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #186
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…

I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand you were totally in the right and should have sued if they persisted. At the same time I have a hard time being emotionally upset at a company/manager behaving rationally. The fact that your wife didn't go back to work will subconsciously reinforce the idea to not hire birthing age women. This is also a huge problem in the UK if anecdotes from my friends are any indicatio…

A good argument for parental leave not being tied to employer, and instead being tied paid by the state.

I've heard of moms before who would rather tell the truth that they're not coming back after leave, but there's little upside and a lot of risk.

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

#215

Post by giantsloth »

lhorie wrote: post #111
knuththetruth wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine that Google, famous for their participation in an illegal wage fixing cartel and with its literal army of high-paid attorneys, isn’t too afraid of the legal consequences of discriminating against one woman. Well, so long as the NYTimes doesn’t write about it at least.

Google isn't a person and high-paid attorneys aren't antibodies. It's much more likely that people doing the interviews don't have a clue how to do it (likely because their expertise is software engineering, not recruiting) The sooner we stop blaming faceless corporations and start acknowledging that each person involved in recruiting (including you and me) needs to take training and ethics more seriously, the better…

When people say corporation they clearly mean the board, the C level execs and regulations need to be put in place that promotes a culture of morality for the people that comprise and make these businesses function. You're blaming the individual for a cultural context that has been set by poor and morally bankrupt leadership.

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

#216

Post by kurthr »

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.

And there's... "hey Joe's got young kids and needs to be 9-5 now, you're single so can't you pick up the slack?" Or "you're not married, can't you be on the pager during Xmas/Turkey-day/weekend". They are two abusive sides of the same coin.

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

#217

Post by slavik81 »

rocqua wrote: post #69
lovich wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd have to make it mandatory leave. The social pressure is still tilted towards women as care givers and men as providers so more men will end up not using the leave. If it becomes mandatory then it's just a baked in rising to every employee, _and_ will probably do better for society to have both parents get time with their children. I believe some European states solve this by having the state cover ~60% of your…

There is an alternative. We could amortize the costs of maternity leave over the entire working population. This way we get the desired outcome (companies have no financial disincentive to hire women) without creating weird forced life-decisions. That is, I'd propose we let some government pay the maternity leave, and finance it from income tax.

No incentive is probably an overstatement, but there would certainly be less incentive. Every employer would pay the average cost of paid parental leave, regardless of who they employed. That would reduce discrimination against those likely to use parental leave.

Though, I would probably fund it via a payroll tax so it could remain employer-paid. I don't think it makes any difference to the economics whether you tax the employee or the employer, but changing who pays is an additional decision you'd need to explain and that would be attacked by political opponents. A payroll tax is a smaller change and equally effective, so it's the better option.

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

#218

Post by leetcrew »

giantsloth wrote: post #198
existencebox wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your statement of "recruit" is exactly the sort of misconstruction I was hoping to avoid. threatofrain got it right. This is a problem we need to address, but the solutions I've seen thus far don't take unfortunate pathologies of human psychology into account, and when we don't do that, we get very surprised at the lack of results down the line. You're more than willing to try to live in a world where you say "Becaus…

[flagged]

> Obviously companies have all the power, and we need to fight a guerrilla style war against corporate hegemony, and we obviously have to take strategic consideration of these facts.

virtually no one who posts on this website will be better off after the revolution. why dedicate your life to screwing yourself?

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

#219

Post by lhorie »

not_kurt_godel wrote: post #209
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.

Here's an equally logical statement: If you only have 10 fingers, you can usually also get by with 9. Even a healthy finger consumes a non-trivial amount of oxygen from your blood and has a nail that must be trimmed so it's not a big deal if you accidentally chop one of them off. If the loss of a finger would endanger your livelihood, you probably shouldn't be in that profession in the first place.

If you're trying to suggest that you should hire if you had 1M/yr revenue and 9 employees making 100k each, go ahead and try doing the accounting math for a new hire and see how that goes, vs if you were making 2M/yr.

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

#220

Post by URSpider94 »

metiscus wrote: post #202
nostrademons wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So here's a concrete example of the types of problems existencebox is highlighting: My sister was laid off from her employer of 8 years 3 months after her first child was born. She was a top performer, and they'd been throwing raises and bonuses at her before she got pregnant. Over the same year or so (there were 3-4 rounds of layoffs), every single pregnant woman or mother with kids under 2 that she knew at the comp…

It is free to file a discrimination complaint with the EEOC if you are in the US. They will investigate your claims and attempt to settle them with your employer. If your employer is unwilling to settle they can and do often sue on your behalf to ensure an equitable outcome. Additionally the Department of Labor will investigate your claims and can bring enforcement actions on your behalf. Additionally pregnancy is co…

Nit pick: the ADA is a law, not an agency. The DoJ is the agency that will prosecute violations of the act.
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