Oct 2nd 2014 marked the one year anniversary of the New York City Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. According to a recent NYT article, the Act requires NYC employers to make “reasonable accommodations” for pregnant workers as long as the accommodations don’t cause “undue hardship” for the employer. Laws like these should serve as a reminder to us about what it means to be a working woman in a society where profit is paramount and women are dehumanized. They should remind us that these sort of protections are in fact extremely rare for working women even in the United States and even in a large supposedly liberal city like NYC.
Protections like these are critical for low wage women workers who disproportionately fill the ranks of the poor and unemployed. The burden of child rearing in our society is unfairly placed solely on the shoulders of individual women though the fruits of a women’s ability to reproduce is something our whole species undoubtedly benefits from. Having a government that writes laws and sets up a society which ensures that females have the ability to pursue their career, education and passions just as much as a male can is of upmost importance if we want to move our global society forward.
However beneficial the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act may be (and it is definitely beneficial) it also shows the limits of well-intentioned laws when practiced under a system where being a woman and being a worker are both undervalued (if valued at all).
A recent NYT articles tells the story of Angelica Valencia, a 39-year-old woman from the Bronx who was pushed out of her job because her employer insisted she work overtime even though Angelica had a high risk pregnancy. Angelica was told by her doctor that if she did not want to miscarry (as she had done before) or hurt herself or her baby she should not work overtime. Ms. Valencia did all she could to accommodate her employer so she would not lose the $8.25 an hour job she desperately needed, to the point of making herself sick and even having her co-workers come to her aid in solidarity. To quote the NYT:
“But when Ms. Valencia told her supervisors in July that she had a high-risk pregnancy, they told her she could work only without restrictions, she said. After taking time off to try to negotiate an accommodation with the company, she returned when her co-workers volunteered to handle the heavy machinery and lifting.
“In August, she said, her supervisors insisted that she work overtime. Ms. Valencia felt so ill after two lengthy shifts that she went to the hospital and then to her doctor, who gave her the letter that she handed to her boss.”
Unlike most woman who have had to deal with the dehumanizing tactics of a greedy employer, being fired with a new mouth to feed on the way, Valencia
found the strength to fight back and found a legal organization who is now suing her company for wages lost. While this may give us some hope for Valencia it shows that these laws are severly flawed because in order for them to work they require a worker who has the time, motivation and knowledge to fight for the law to be enforced.
Like most Labor regulations these “laws” ultimately only scare a small percentage of employers into following the law. Most employers do the math and realize the more profitable thing to do is to take their chances that their overworked and underpaid (and at times pregnant) employees will be too busy taking care of themselves to deal with legal battling their boss.
Typically worker organizations like unions would be available to help out women like Valencia fight their bosses but unions are becoming harder to organize across the country and are almost non-existent in the low wage work that many women of color are employed in. This is why socialists work to build fighting worker-led organizations wherever we are. By fighting together as working men and women our class can feel the power of our united action and ultimately build a new society where working women’s rights don’t have to be fought for tooth and nail but are instead guaranteed.
