Many women face pregnancy discrimination, NYT investigation finds

MEMPHIS, Tennessee - If you are a Verizon customer on the East Coast, odds are good that your cellphone or tablet arrived by way of a beige, windowless warehouse near Tennessee’s border with Mississippi.

Inside, hundreds of workers, many of them women, lift and drag boxes weighing up to 45 pounds, filled with iPhones and other gadgets. There is no air-conditioning on the floor of the warehouse, which is owned and operated by a contractor. Temperatures there can rise past 100 degrees. Workers often faint, according to interviews with 20 current and former employees.

One evening in January 2014, after eight hours of lifting, Erica Hayes ran to the bathroom. Blood drenched her jeans.

She was 23 and in the second trimester of her first pregnancy. She had spent much of the week hoisting the warehouse’s largest boxes from one conveyor belt to the next. Ever since she learned she was pregnant, she had been begging her supervisor to let her work with lighter boxes, she said in an interview. She said her boss repeatedly said no.

She fainted on her way out of the bathroom that day. The baby growing inside of her, the one she had secretly hoped was a girl, was gone.

“It was the worst thing I have ever experienced in my life,” Hayes said.

Three other women in the warehouse also had miscarriages in 2014, when it was owned by a contractor called New Breed Logistics. Later that year, a larger company, XPO Logistics, bought New Breed and the warehouse. The problems continued. Another woman miscarried there this summer. Then, in August, Ceeadria Walker did, too.

The women all had asked for light duty. Three said they brought in doctors’ notes recommending less taxing workloads and shorter shifts. They said supervisors disregarded the letters.

Pregnancy discrimination is widespread in corporate America. Some employers deny expecting mothers promotions or pay raises, others fire them before they can take maternity leave. But for women who work in physically demanding jobs, pregnancy discrimination often can come with even higher stakes.

The New York Times reviewed thousands of pages of court and other public records involving workers who said they had suffered miscarriages, went into premature labor or, in one case, had a stillborn baby after their employers rejected their pleas for assistance - a break from flipping heavy mattresses, lugging large boxes and pushing loaded carts.

They worked at a hospital, a post office, an airport, a grocery store, a prison, a fire department, a restaurant, a pharmaceutical company and several hotels.

Few rules apply

Refusing to accommodate pregnant women is often completely legal. Under federal law, companies do not necessarily have to adjust pregnant women’s jobs, even when lighter work is available and their doctors send letters urging a reprieve.

The Pregnancy Discrimination Act is the only federal law aimed at protecting expecting mothers at work. It is four paragraphs long and 40 years old. It says that a company has to accommodate pregnant workers’ requests only if it is already doing so for other employees who are “similar in their ability or inability to work.”

That means that companies that do not give anyone a break have no obligation to do so for pregnant women. Employees say that is how the warehouse’s current owner, XPO Logistics, operates.

In every congressional session since 2012, a group of lawmakers has introduced a bill that would do for pregnant women what the Americans With Disabilities Act does for disabled people: require employers to accommodate those whose health depends on it. The legislation has never had a hearing.

“We are deeply troubled by these allegations,” said a Verizon spokesman, Rich Young. “We have no tolerance - zero tolerance - for this sort of alleged behavior.” He said the company opened an internal investigation in response to the Times’ inquiry. “None of these allegations are consistent with our values or the expectations and demands of contractors that work directly for us or have any affiliation with us.”

Erin Kurtz, an XPO spokeswoman, said: “We’re surprised by the allegations of conduct that either predate XPO’s acquisition of the Memphis facility or weren’t reported to management after we acquired it in 2014.” She said the allegations “are unsubstantiated, filled with inaccuracies and do not reflect the way in which our Memphis facility operates.” The company also disputed that the warehouse was windowless, noting that there were interior windows.

Kurtz said XPO prioritized the safety of its workers, had “no tolerance for any type of discriminatory behavior” and has enhanced pay and benefits for employees in recent years.

Pleas rejected

Those improvements did not help Ceeadria Walker when she got pregnant. The 19-year-old said she gave her XPO supervisor a doctor’s letter saying she should not lift more than 15 pounds. She said she asked to be assigned to an area with lighter items.

Walker said her supervisor regularly sent her to a conveyor belt line where she had to lift more than she was supposed to. She miscarried the day after spending her shift handling those heavier boxes.

“We’re saddened that Ms. Walker had a miscarriage over the summer,” Kurtz said. “We’re investigating these newly raised claims.”

The risks of lifting

For most women, it is safe to work while pregnant.

But there is “a slight to modest increased risk of miscarriage” for women who do extensive lifting in their jobs, according to guidelines published this year by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. The recommendations are intended to inform doctors about best practices.

The potential dangers are greatest for women whose pregnancies are already classified as high risk, which is why doctors often advise that they be given easier tasks.

“When employers ignore these medical recommendations, they are potentially jeopardizing patients’ health,” said Rebecca Jackson, chief of obstetrics and gynecology at San Francisco General Hospital. “It’s especially bothersome to me that this is occurring for women in strenuous jobs, given that they are at the most risk of injuring themselves or the pregnancy.”

Warehouses are among the fastest growing workplaces in the country, employing more than 1 million Americans. Retailers, competing against the likes of Amazon, demand high speed at low costs.

The Verizon facility, which XPO took over when it bought New Breed Logistics in 2014, is the only one where the Times interviewed workers about pregnancy discrimination. Shifts there can last 12 hours. Workers get 30 minutes for lunch and as many as three other 15-minute breaks.

XPO’s 2017 employee handbook warns that taking unapproved breaks, arriving to work late or leaving early can result in “immediate termination,” unless the reasons for the departures are “legally protected.” The Pregnancy Discrimination Act does not guarantee women such protections.

Stalled momentum

A bipartisan group of lawmakers has proposed upgrading the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act. The bill would compel companies to accommodate pregnant women - for example, by offering extra breaks or the option of light duty - as long as it does not impose an “undue hardship” on their business. That is the same language used in the Americans With Disabilities Act.

Women “shouldn’t have to choose between keeping a doctor appointment or their job,” said Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nevada, one of 125 co-sponsors of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act in the House and Senate.

In 2015, it looked as if the bill might gain traction. The Supreme Court had just ruled in favor of Peggy Young, a UPS driver who was denied light duty after getting pregnant.

But some Republicans, including Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, where the XPO warehouse is, viewed that bill as adding a confusing new layer of regulations, according to Senate aides. Alexander, who is chairman of the Senate committee on health and labor, co-sponsored a competing bill. It expanded protections for pregnant women in some cases. But it still allowed employers to deny accommodations if they weren’t being provided to other workers in similar situations.

“It was a useful mechanism in order to divert some of the momentum that was building,” said Emily Martin of the National Women’s Law Center, an advocacy group focused on women’s rights.

Both bills stalled.

Second miscarriage

In September 2014, Chasisty Bee, 33, was four months pregnant. Hoping for a girl, she bought a newborn’s blanket from Burlington Coat Factory.

Bee had miscarried in 2008 while working at the Verizon warehouse. This time, she said, she brought in a doctor’s note recommending that she work shorter shifts, be given a chair and light duty. Supervisors rejected her requests. One afternoon, after almost 14 hours on her feet, she started feeling dizzy and crumpled to the warehouse floor. Her physician told her that she had miscarried.

After Bee got pregnant again in 2015, she found a new job. “I couldn’t bear to lose another child,” she said. The next February, she gave birth to a healthy girl.

California case

The problems extend beyond the warehouse floor - to hotels, restaurants, fire stations and stores.

At the Albertsons grocery store in Atascadero,, Reyna Garcia had one of the toughest jobs. She pushed 200-pound carts, dragged sacks of cat litter and climbed 10-foot ladders to stock goods.

Garcia got pregnant in July 2012, found out she was having a girl and decided to name the baby Jade.

Garcia told her boss that her pregnancy was high risk - she had previously given birth prematurely. She presented a doctor’s note saying she should not lift more than 15 pounds. The boss ignored the recommendation, according to a lawsuit she filed against Albertsons in federal court in Los Angeles.

One day in the middle of her shift, Garcia began feeling “pelvic pressure,” according to her lawsuit. She asked her boss for permission to leave early; he gave her a long list of tasks that she needed to finish first.

Garcia ended up working overtime. By the time she got home, she could feel her amniotic sac bulging between her legs. She went to the emergency room. Five days later, Garcia gave birth to Jade. The baby lived less than 10 minutes.

In 2014, Albertsons settled Garcia’s lawsuit for an undisclosed amount; the deal prohibited her from speaking publicly about what happened. “The company has a policy against pregnancy discrimination, and we accommodate employees with pregnancy-?related disabilities in accordance with state and federal law,” said Christine Wilcox, an Albertsons spokeswoman.

Garcia’s boss demoted her when she returned to work.