Final rules for Pregnant Workers Fairness Act go into effect

The finalized regulations for carrying out the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act have just gone into effect. As we’ve discussed before, this legislation requires employers to provide “reasonable accommodations” for workers dealing with pregnancy or childbirth-related situations.

Charlotte Burrows, chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, spoke with “Marketplace Morning Report” host David Brancaccio about the new rules. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

David Brancaccio: What are the best ways to pursue this? I assume this could involve more breaks for people at work if they’re pregnant. What about changing job duties if there’s a special physical challenge?

Charlotte Burrows: Exactly. Any of those could be reasonable accommodations for pregnant workers under the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. It may be changing a uniform or dress code or providing safety equipment that fits. Oftentimes, what we see is that the worker needs a slightly different schedule, such as shorter work hours or part-time work or a later start time. And the big one, of course, is leave time for appointments with health care professionals. So, all of those are examples of things that the employer needs to accommodate unless it would be an undue hardship, which means, frankly, just it’d be a really significant expense or difficulty for the employer.

Brancaccio: Yeah, because I remember when the original law was enacted, there was like — what should I say? A presumption that there’d be some dialogue between the employee and the employer to work this out.

Burrows: That’s exactly right. So, for example, the worker could say, “I’m having trouble getting to work at my scheduled start time because of morning sickness.” Or “I need more bathroom breaks because of my pregnancy.” Or “I need time off from work to go see the doctor because of my pregnancy.”

Brancaccio: Are you seeing cases where workers are complaining that the company is complaining undue hardship and not doing what the employee expects the employer to do?

Burrows: We have received a number of concerns about this. What we do when we get those is we do an investigation and try to get it resolved. So far, we’ve had about, around 450 charge resolutions under the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. We’ve got a number that are still pending that we are looking into.

Brancaccio: And an individual, a person who’s pregnant, can actually trigger one of these reviews?

Burrows: Absolutely. We had a limited ability before the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act to address some of these problems under the Americans with Disabilities Act when they were more significant. And we saw some really heartbreaking issues there. We had — fortunately, we were able to settle it — but an employee who was really forced to quit just to access the urgent care that she needed after she’d asked and been denied. And unfortunately, that employee miscarried later the same day. And so, it’s been quite tragic when there wasn’t a prompt enough response from the employer. And we obviously are happy to get some sort of settlement for the worker, but that’s really no substitute for the employer doing the right thing on the front end.