Was Your Boss Weird About Your Pregnancy? You’re Not the Only One
Was Your Boss Weird About Your Pregnancy? You’re Not the Only One
(Bloomberg) --
Three pregnancy discrimination lawsuits were filed last week by women who claim they were pushed out or laid off from their jobs because they were pregnant. The cases involve different companies, in different industries, and women at different stages of their careers, including one who was the CEO and co-founder of a company.
Technically, the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act should have made situations like this a thing of the past. They’re not, and the way employers struggle–and often fail–to treat pregnant women fairly is the topic of this week’s episode of The Pay Check.
The first case, against Netflix, was filed by Tania Zarak, a former manager in the company’s International Originals department. Zarak claims that after she told her supervisor that she was pregnant, he excluded her from meetings and took her off projects. When she reported his behavior to human resources, she says, she was fired. A Netflix representative said that the company had investigated and that the claims were unfounded.
The second lawsuit comes from six former Jones Day employees who claim the firm habitually demoted or laid off women who had children, believing they weren’t dedicated to their jobs. Two plaintiffs, Nilab Rahyar Tolton and one who wishes to remain anonymous, say they were cut off from assignments after they returned to the firm from their first maternity leaves. Tolton says she was given a negative performance review and her salary was frozen. Then, after returning from leaves for their second children, both women allege they were “instructed to find another employment and to leave the firm.” Jones Day did not respond to requests for comment.
Both suits characterize the companies as generally hostile to pregnancy and maternity leave. Netflix offers up to a year of parental leave, but in reality new parents are expected to take no more than four months, Zarak claims. Her suit also alleges that executives insinuated that anyone who took the full year would be punished.
Netflix denies this, but more broadly, what Zarak alleges is actually pretty common. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, which tracks things like parental leave, one-third of women and two-thirds of men don’t take full advantage of their companies’ parental leave policies. Sometimes they worry about the negative consequences of taking time off. Other times they simply can’t afford it.
The third suit is unusual because it involves Chris and Natasha Ashton, the husband-and-wife co-founders and co-CEOs of pet insurance company Fetch. The Ashtons sued Fetch’s investors, including banking mogul Vernon Hill and hedge fund investor Steven Cohen, claiming that about seven weeks after Natasha gave birth, Fetch’s board of directors stripped them of their CEO titles and operational control of the company. In court filings, Hill and Cohen argue that the Ashtons were removed as co-CEOs because they broke their contract.
In their complaint, the Ashtons describe a board member worrying aloud that Natasha’s pregnancy would “derail” an upcoming board meeting. Similarly, in the Jones Day lawsuit, plaintiffs allege that a practice leader in Cleveland “encouraged” women to tell him if they were planning on becoming pregnant within the next year so he could plan his budget. (Ohio’s fair employment laws encourage employers not to ask those kinds of questions.)
Trying to prove any kind of discrimination in court is hard, and it takes a long time. When it comes to pregnancy, the courts have struggled with when the law requires companies to treat pregnant women the same as men or other non-pregnant people, and when it requires them to be treated differently.
This week’s episode of The Pay Check looks at the recent cases of yet two more women, an orthodontist’s assistant in Minnesota and a television news anchor in Mississippi, who also saw job opportunities disappear because they were pregnant. The orthodontist’s assistant had physical evidence that seemed to indicate that being pregnant had cost her a job offer, but Minnesota’s Supreme Court saw her situation differently.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Janet Paskin at jpaskin@bloomberg.net
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