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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

#371

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

My partner works at a small startup of ~12 people. They employ some 8 ladies all but one of whom became pregnant in recent years, while working at the company. The company kept going without any damage to its business. At some point, they had a bad turn and had to downsize so they fired most of the working mothers, who tended to hold the most expendable positions, I guess. Eventually, the company's fortunes turned again, at which point they re-hired all the people they had laid off (or offered to- some had moved on). They seem to be doing fine now, in any case they have plenty of business.

I'm just saying: pregnancy does exactly zero harm to a company's bottom line or a woman's ability to hold down a job and perform at her role. And even if it did, we're talking about a tiny startup of a dozen people. If it can handle most of its staff being pregnant or with kids, then a big corp like Walmart or Merck has no excuse not to. No excuse at all.

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

#372

Post by Broken_Hippo »

to_bpr wrote: post #93
Broken_Hippo wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Birth records are public records, and if they aren't together, many states will require the father to pay child support once they figure out who he is. Sure, no one would have to know, but they can find out. If the non-pregnant partner carries the health insurance, they will probably want the pregnancy covered and the baby once it is born. An intelligent non-pregnant partner would change his tax exemptions to mirror…

This is incredibly dystopian and would be massive government and corporate overreach. I would hope a reasonable person would never advocate for such intrusion.

Most of these are already in place and they already have your information about your family. Insurance providers, the IRS, and so on. Women already have absolutely no choice in people knowing they are expecting a child. For health reasons - both theirs and the baby's - they already need to take time off. It isn't like women can claim a back injury when they are pregnant. A few bad employers already put their hands in whether or not health insurance covers birth control. If this stuff is dystopian to you, you are already living in one.

Birth records are already there. Most employers won't look unless law, and I agree this isn't the best way to do it. However, if some time off is mandatory, it'd be reasonable for the state to inform the father he's required to take time off after the baby. Following the law would be his responsibility: The employer would only be forced to comply if they knew.

There are already regulations (either through law or company policies) about adding a child onto your health insurance. Most times, folks have to upgrade their health insurance to a family plan if it is their first child. For other children, they already have to report that to health insurance so the child is covered. A reminder from the insurance that the law requires parental leave as well as maternal leave would be prudent. These folks already are handling your information now.

FMLA is already in place. These folks already handle health records, and as mentioned, the reason can stay hidden from employers to an extent.

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

#373

Post by [deleted] »

hotdog97 wrote: post #58
newfoundglory wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you want people to do when they are job searching while pregnant? Are you just wishing you'd been told on her first day on the job?

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?

[deleted]

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

#374

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

hotdog97 wrote: post #58
newfoundglory wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you want people to do when they are job searching while pregnant? Are you just wishing you'd been told on her first day on the job?

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?

I think it always makes sense to go looking for a job when you don't have one and you wish to be an independent adult and support yourself through employment.

But, obviously, we're not talking the same kind of "makes sense" here, are we?

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

#375

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

falcolas wrote: post #258
icelancer wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Not even remotely feasible on a single income now, unless you're talking executive pay. Yes it is. Just not if you want to live in really nice cities and have a ton of stuff. If you want to live in a suburb, commute, not own much in the way of technology, and own a house 30% of the size of what people live in now, then yeah, that's doable. Housing costs have inflated and that's worthy of note. But so have our expe…

My parents had a 2,500 sq. ft. house on 5 acres of land. They've replaced their vehicles about every 5 years. I remember twice-yearly vacations where we flew out to Mexico or the eastern seaboard. I was, by current standards, spoiled rotten when it comes to the money my parents spent on tech for me. They've both been able to retire (including snowbird trips to AZ) without worries about money due to a pension and inve…

>> You'll have a hard time convincing me that it's our expectations which have changed the most.

And all this is because women now have careers, instead of being stay-at-home moms?

(Apologies if I misunderstood your comment. I'm trying to connect it to what the GP said.)

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

#376

Post by slavik81 »

simonh wrote: post #341
existencebox wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually; that (From the business) is the part I don't agree with. (You're right that the US is comparatively lacking, however) As Rayiner accurately points out, children are clearly necessary from a societal point of view. Thus, it seems "most fair" for the whole society to bear that, and for it to not be unevenly distributed such that it generates perverse incentives for business owners.

Might this unfairly subsidise companies paying higher salaries? So Google and their employees would get more money from the government to support their pregnant employees than Joes Pizza Company? Why? Companies that pay higher salaries by their choice incur higher payroll costs. That’s just how that works. Trying to engineer the system to even that out somehow is just introducing bureaucracy and costs into the system…

> Might this unfairly subsidise companies paying higher salaries?

If designed properly it would not. High-income employees would get more pay out of the program, but they would also have to pay more into the program. It would be a wash, just like employment insurance or social security.

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

#377

Post by Spooky23 »

home_boi wrote: post #264
Spooky23 wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you work in an incestuous industry like tech, you will be blacklisted in many circles for going down this path.

Will it? Women who have made public, unproven accusations of sexual harassment seem to be doing just fine

Are they?

They look overqualified and not a good fit with the team culture.

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

#378

Post by AFNobody »

gnicholas wrote: post #252
AFNobody wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. The policy solution is: - A per-child negative income tax sufficient to cover the risk/impact of employer discrimination. - Give mothers and fathers equal leave. - Limit the compulsory work week to 50 hours for salaried (or overtime hourly) employees. - Penalt…

> A per-child negative income tax sufficient to cover the risk/impact of employer discrimination. Wouldn't this just lead to employers discriminating, on the grounds that "hey, you already got your tax benefit to make up for it"?

Not if the penalties harsh enough that a decent lawyer will take an average case on spec.

You need to remember the effectiveness of a law is penalty * odds of getting caught. You just need to make discrimination unattractive financially and provide some incentive to the parents to cover the risk.

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

#379

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

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…

Like I say in another comment, my partner works for a small startup of ~12 people, 7 of whom became pregnant and gave birth in the last five years or so, while working for the company.

The company manages just fine. It's a small startup of a dozen people. Almost two thirds of their employees had babies and the company's productivity never suffered from it. Fact, one of the ladies had twins and came back after a month, to continue ruling over the lesser mortals with an iron hand.

So I can say with convicton that there is no logic in claiming that a woman's productivity has to take a hit if she has babies. Much less any "biological reality" to any of what you have written.

You just severely understimate pregnant women and mothers, is all.

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

#380

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

rayiner wrote: post #158
existencebox wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> However, we don't live in a world where a business is spared the cost incurred by that. We also live in a world where the stock market ceases to exist if there isn’t a new generation of consumers and workers. (Facebook’s stock price is predicated on the idea that 1 years from now there will still be young people to advertise to.) Children create internalized costs (to parents, to businesses that hire parents), but…

Businesses aren't spared the benefits generated by their employees.

Employees are a benefit, not a cost. The fact employees have requirements of their own is something that happens in organisations run by humans for humans.

If you think employees are a cost, you're doing business wrong - and doing humanity wrong too.

This really comes down to a political issue - who is business for? In capitalist economies, business exists primarily to make money for shareholders and management.

The belief that this can excuse all kinds of incredibly inhumane behaviours is far more of a problem than the fact that women get pregnant and need time off.

Now - you can argue there is huge inconvenience in not having someone turn up to work for a while. From one point of view, it's certainly not ideal.

But a mature business should be able to deal with all kinds of challenges, including human issues, technical issues, political issues, and financial issues.

Being amazed and blindsided by a pregnancy, or even multiple pregnancies, suggests poor planning and a brittle culture. It's not evidence of freebooting capitalism, so much as of not being very good at management.

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