Pregnant workers or those who recently gave birth would be entitled to new on-the-job accommodations — including longer, more frequent breaks, schedule changes, teleworking privileges and temporary job restructuring — under new employee protections proposed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on Monday.
Examples of accommodations, according to the EEOC’s proposed rule, include allowing sitting or standing on the job, schedule changes, part-time work, modifying equipment or uniforms, or temporarily suspending core job functions for up to 40 weeks, among other changes.
The proposal is “right on target” with its regulations and specific examples, said Yana Rodgers, faculty director of the Center for Women and Work at Rutgers University.
“I think there is some clear guidance here,” Rodgers said. “And if anything, I think there is more clear guidance than when the Americans With Disabilities Act was first passed.”
The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, she said, plugged gaps between other federal workplace protection laws.
The Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 allowed workers to seek accommodations on the job for pregnancy-related conditions only if employers granted similar accommodations to other employees. In practice, that meant pregnant workers could not take more breaks or avoid strenuous activities that could be harmful to them or their baby if other employees did not get the same workplace modifications.
The Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 stipulated that pregnancy is not a disability, so pregnant workers were only able to seek accommodations when they were unable to do their jobs because of pregnancy or childbirth.
Under the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, workers are entitled to certain protections for their own health and the health of their pregnancy as long as the accommodations don’t present “undue hardship” to employers.
“This is monumentally significant,” said Sarah Brafman, national policy director at A Better Balance, an employment legal advocacy nonprofit. “Our laws around pregnancy and childbirth and protections in the workplace haven’t been updated in 40 years. That is two generations … that have existed in a legal landscape that did not provide sufficient ways to remain healthy while pregnant and continue earning a paycheck.”
The policies would take effect after a public review period, potential revisions and approval by the EEOC’s four commissioners and the Office of Management and Budget. The rules would apply to employers with 15 or more workers.
The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act was originally introduced in Congress in 2012, but only gained enough support when it was added to last December’s $1.7 trillion bipartisan budget compromise, along with the Providing Urgent Maternal Protections, or “PUMP, Act, which requires employers to provide break time an employee to express breast milk and provide a private place to pump at work other than a bathroom.
Pregnant people make up less than 2 percent of the U.S. workforce, according to a report from the National Partnership for Women and Families that uses data gathered from 2016 to 2020. But experts say workplace protections for that small subset of workers will help shrink gender and racial wage gaps.
Since the law took effect on June 27, the EEOC has already begun accepting charges against employers in violation of the pregnancy fairness act, the agency said.
A Better Balance’s legal help line has received inquiries related to the pregnancy law from workers in physically demanding industries such as retail, manufacturing and warehousing, Brafman said, and in male-dominated industries, such as law enforcement, construction and agriculture.
She called the statute a “groundbreaking” civil rights law that was part of a culture change to protect pregnant people on the job.
“We have given scant support to both being pregnant and earning a living in this country,” she said. “What the Pregnant Worker Fairness Act says is, ‘No more.’”