On June 27, the federal Pregnant Workers Fairness Act took effect. The law requires employers to provide accommodations for pregnancy-related medical conditions, everything from pregnancy to childbirth to postpartum recovery.
The law also protects workers from retaliation after making those requests and from being forced into taking unpaid leave.
Examples could be giving a worker additional time to sit, rest, drink, eat or use the bathroom. It could mean relaxing some policies to allow workers a stool to sit on, allow them to wear maternity clothing or allow a water bottle in an area where it’s not typically allowed. Schedule-wise, accommodations could include time off for prenatal appointments, accommodating for morning sickness or allowing remote work if available.
For workers with jobs that require significant manual labor, transferring workers to light duty or temporarily transferring them to a less physically demanding job would constitute an accommodation.
As previously reported here, the “pro-life,” “pro-family” Congressman Cline vote NO when it came up for a vote in May 2021.
But mysteriously, Cline voted YES on the exact same bill in September 2020. As I wrote after his 2021 NO vote:
So why, between September and May, did Cline change his mind and decide that he didn’t want to protect the rights of pregnant workers after all?
Ask him. Please.
Please.
Gene Zitver is the editor of ClineWatch.
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