On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear the case of Peggy Young, a UPS driver who sued her company under the Pregnancy Discrimination Act. After being advised by her doctor not to lift more than 20 pounds — when her job specified that she be able to lift 70 — UPS placed her on unpaid leave. (UPS has since changed its policy, but has maintained it did nothing wrong.) After losing twice in lower courts in Maryland, Young's case is now before the Supreme Court.
Its decision could have a critical impact on expecting workers' rights. At issue is whether pregnant women should be provided with light-duty work, as other workers who are limited by job-related injuries or by other disabilities receive. The case could become one of the most significant in decades for women in the workforce. It's also a reminder that the state of benefits provided to new mothers on the job can be pretty disheartening.
Some two-thirds of women work during their pregnancy, up from less than half in the 1960s. And of those who do, the vast majority — nearly 82 percent — work into the last month before giving birth.
Yet despite these numbers, and despite a record 40 percent of women now being the breadwinners in their families, the picture isn't so rosy for U.S. women trying to mix family and work in this country.
That's especially true when compared with their peers in other developed economies. The United States is the only developed economy around the globe, and one of only two of the 185 countries studied worldwide by the International Labour Organization, that doesn't mandate paid leave for new mothers. (The other, in case you're wondering, is Papua New Guinea.)
The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) does require that U.S. companies grant 12 weeks of leave to full-time workers who meet several criteria, but it doesn't require that leave to be paid. And the federal requirement hardly covers everyone. One analysis found that just 55.6 percent of women working in the private sector were eligible for FMLA leave. The rest don't meet the qualifications, for example if they work part-time or for a smaller company.
A small handful of states, including California, New York and New Jersey, do mandate some paid maternity leave, but there is no federal requirement.
In most other developed economies, paid maternity leave comes out of social security or public funds, and often represents much of what a woman was making before she went out on leave. In Germany, for instance, women get 14 weeks of maternity leave, paid at 100 percent of their previous earnings. In tiny Luxembourg, it's 16 weeks.
Of course, many American companies do offer some form of paid maternity leave as a benefit — roughly 58 percent of them, according to the Families and Work Institute's 2014 National Study of Employers. Still, very few of those companies promise to pay women their full salary while they're gone, and even that small fraction is declining. In 2008, 16 percent of those companies that offer paid maternity leave promised to fully pay women their prior salaries while they were out; in 2014, that number is just 9 percent.
And remember: Even within those companies that offer paid leave, many employees may not be eligible to take it. When you combine that with the number of employees working at companies that don't offer it at all, plus the number of men who can't take paid paternity leave, the total number of Americans who can access such a benefit is extremely low. According to 2012 figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, just 13 percent of full-time private industry workers — men and women — are able to receive paid family leave. That sinks to 4 percent for part-timers.
Of course, the leave benefits provided to women after they give birth are in some cases a secondary matter to those employees who feel discriminated against even before the baby arrives. Peggy Young is far from alone: In fiscal year 1997, pregnancy discrimination claims to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission numbered just over 3,900. By 2013, the number had grown to 5,342.
Read also:
When 'good' maternity leave programs can actually hurt women
When dads take paternity leave
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