Some employers find excuses to fire pregnant employees

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140221103715.htm

Date: February 21, 2014
Source: Ohio State University
Summary:
The Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 makes it illegal in the United States for a woman to be fired just because she is pregnant. But that doesn’t stop it from happening, according to new research by two sociologists. What employers do to get around the law is vilify pregnant women as poor performers and tardy employees while also pointing to seemingly fair attendance policies and financial costs, their research shows. Pregnancy discrimination only compounds other gender-based employment inequalities women face in the workplace in areas such as hiring, wages and harassment, the authors argue.

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Although such concerns may, at face value, seem legitimate in a business sense, Byron and Roscigno note that the same policies and rationales are often not invoked in the case of non-pregnant employees, including those with worse records of performance and attendance.

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One example Byron and Roscigno cite in their paper was the case of a woman who was fired from her job as an assistant restaurant manager after she became pregnant. Her supervisor claimed that the company was restructuring and needed to reduce its number of assistant managers from three to two. But after she was fired for "business reasons," the company hired a man to fill the exact same position that was supposedly no longer needed.

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