Trying to Kill Two Birds with One Stone: The Negative Implications of Pregnancy Discrimination

Women undergoing pregnancy and expecting to conceive a child should be provided with optimum care since stress or anxiety may cause harm to the infant inside their wombs. However, this is not always the case in California since some employers have a faulty impression that these women are liabilities to the company.

For many employers who violate the rights of pregnant employees through wrongful termination, they think that these women have no capability of carrying out their specific tasks assigned to them due to their condition. Obviously, this is discriminatory and unfair for them.

Fortunately, there are federal laws that protect women employees undergoing pregnancy from being discriminated against on the basis of their medical condition. One such law is the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA).

Implemented since 1993, the law states that female employees should be given time to care for or nurse for their newborn baby. Meanwhile, the law also states that pregnancy discrimination is defined as the cruel treatment of expectant women. Most of the complaints under pregnancy discrimination have illustrated the cruel treatments towards soon-to-be mothers in which they were deprived of their basic rights and benefits.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is a federal agency that enforces FMLA and other federal laws that prohibit discrimination. As it is, the agency provides some of the most common premises within workplaces which can be easily categorized as pregnancy discrimination. Here are some of them:

• The employer deliberately refuses to amend the workload of the employee.

• The employer lessens the wage of the employee because of her pregnancy.

• The pregnant applicant is denied of her application because of her condition.

• The employer does not promote the employee on purpose due to her pregnancy

• The employer imposes rules within the company that favors the non-pregnant employees over pregnant ones.

Incidentally, a Los Angeles employment discrimination lawyer can help aggrieved employees in prosecuting employers who unlawfully acted against them. With the lawyer’s expertise in going after defendants and obtaining justice for clients, questioned employers should be able to learn their lesson since their actions deprive the rights of both the newborn baby and his or her mother.