My friend and I recently got into a brief discussion about the Family and Medical Leave Act (1993) better known as FMLA. He stated that FMLA is neccessary in order to protect peoples jobs, especially women who’ve become pregnant. He says that in the 70’s women would very often get fired if they told their boss they were pregnant. I responded by saying that his comments sounded like a bunch of emotional propaganda, probably similiar to that used to get the Act passed in the first place. Unfortunatly we were unable to continue the discussion because we were on break and had to go back to work. I told him I would do some research on the subject and get back to him. Does anyone have any insight, links to essays, articles, or know of any books that discuss how employers handled leaves of absence, especially for pregnancies or illnesses, prior to FMLA.
No one has a right to keep their job.
^^ I brought this point up toward the end of the conversation and he agreed.
A hundred different employers handled their employees a hundred different ways as it should be.
An employer that depends on only one employee to be his secretary or deliver his pizza or tutor his clients, is under no obligation to close his business down or put it on a 9 month hiatus while the bills stack up. An employer that has two employees is not obligated to cut income in half and so on.
If pregnancy and income are important to a female employee it is entirely within her rights to contract with an employer beforehand what would happen and put clauses in for how to make up the differences. This is none of the governments business, As a general rule, restrictive business legislation in multiple different ways takes away from employee A and customer B what they give to employee C.
The owner is obligated to his family to keep the business growing as efficiently and as profitably as possible.
Another group of employers might have a market reason to be more sensitive. If they have 1000 employees who manufacture and distribute maternity clothing, they might find it more market savvy to make a big deal of charging an extra 10% and promise not to lay off any pregnant employees.
Yet other kinds of businesses might have hazardous chemicals or radiation that could harm a fetus and have a policy for them not to be on the premises.
Then there are different kinds of employees. Some are so valuable to the company that they can never be fired in 100 years. The boss might move them to a desk job or have them work virtually from home. Their job security comes from their productivity not the government.
Another employee might make $15 per hour at a factory where she can no longer work but might settle for a job at $14 an hour as a telemarketer if she does the calculation of losing $1 per hour is less than losing all her income for 9 months.
In none of the above cases is there a need for government interference. Nor is it possible to ever write a law that encompasses all industries that will not have as a side effect some hidden discrimination against some other faction.
In this case the effect probably is that some businesses will hire no women, some only older women, some will hire them and pay them less. In either case if government decrees that they cannot be fired for X then the employer will have to fire them for Y.(at least the lawyers get rich)
It will NOT have the effect the politicians think it does.
In a free market, competition for labor would result in employment contracts that assure a womens job in case she gets pregnant. By mandating this the government merely prohibits women from making the choice to take a job that offers other benefits instead. No regulation creates additional benefits, we always pay the price. There is no free lunch.
From: http://www.thehrspecialist.com/article.aspx?articleid=5472
Singling out pregnant employees for any reason can lead to a lawsuit. If supervisors make little jokes about pregnancy and childbirth, rein them in.
In one recent case, when a top performer received an award at a luncheon, she was taken aback when her boss casually said, “You’re not gonna get pregnant now, are you?” As luck would have it, she did become pregnant the following month. Then her boss began calling her “Prego” and soon was criticizing her work. She complained to HR, but the company didn’t investigate. She sued, and the court concluded calling her “Prego” and making comments about pregnancy amounted to a hostile environment. (Zisumbo v. McLeodUSA Telecom, No. 04-4119, 10th Cir., 2006)
First rule of pregnancy: you do not talk about pregnancy.
Nevertheless, I think it would be unwise to fire a truly good worker for having to take off a few months due to pregnancy. But it is not someone’s right to keep their job under such conditions. It’s certainly something that should come up beforehand.
Firing workers who get sick/pregnant is not just bad for morale but bad for publicity.
Alot of great insights everyone, thank you.
It raises the price of hiring women in the first place, meaning that employers will seek women who are unlikely to get married and/or pregnant and who have very high qualifications. So the underclass family woman suffers from this, while the well-educated perma-cougar benefits. It’s pretty much the same with affirmative action laws in the case of blacks.
It would be interesting to note the percentage of employers voluntarily supporting and implementing actions from the FMLA, prior to the act being implemented, and if the act just provided a government stamp of approval for such actions.