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- The Plight Of The Pregnant Worker
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- Dick Meister
Getting pregnant can cause a woman to legally lose her job, despite the laws banning job descrimination against women and the disabled.
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Related Pieces
Piece Description
Getting pregnant can cause a woman to legally lose her job, despite the laws banning job descrimination against women and the disabled.
Broadcast History
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Transcript
Dina Bakst of the Work and Family Legal Center reminds us of an important fact that few people seem to realize . . . that getting pregnant can cause a woman to lose her job, despite the laws banning employment discrimination against women and the disabled.
Bakst asked, in a recent New York Times column, that we imagine a woman who, seven months pregnant, was fired from her job as a cashier because she needed a few extra bathroom breaks.
That actually happened. So did the firing of a pregnant worker from her retail job after she gave her supervisors a doctor's note asking that she not be required to do any heavy lifting or climbing of ladders during the month and a half before she went on maternity leave.
A federal judge ruled in that case that firing the woman was fair because her employers were not legally obligated to accommodate her needs. A peculiar interpretation of the law, no...
Read the full transcript
Intro and Outro
INTRO:Commentator Dick Meister says there are some complications in pregnancy you may not realize.
OUTRO:Dick Meister is a longtime labor and political journalist.
