Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Biggest Companies

Re:Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Bigg... by simonh on Saturday June 16, 2018 @03:36AM (#17326416)

I suspect that well meaning attempts to rig the system that way would just backfire. Big companies have the resources, lawyers and incentives to manipulate and exploit regulations like that to their advantage. I think the simplest approach, which is just regulating against discrimination, may not be perfect but trying to come up with a perfect system will just impose so much regulation and costs and exploitable loopholes that it wouldn’t end up any better and could well be both worse and more expensive.

Note I’m not taking a blanket all regulation is bad stance. I support regulation to protect pregnant employees and family life. I am recruiting right now for a contractor to cover for a pregnant employee in my team (in the UK). I just think in general the simplest approach is usually the beast, or anyway the least worst.

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Re:Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Bigg... by threatofrain on Saturday June 16, 2018 @05:42AM (#17326753)

I think we agree that companies shouldn't be allowed to discriminate on the basis of sex, reproductive status, or family plans. However, I would contend that a simple blanket rule doesn't address the incentives to discriminate.

I would also argue that burden to compensate companies for employees taking time off for personal or family matters (regardless of sex, reproductive plan or status) should be shouldered at the state or national level, and not at local level where there may be higher disparity in both burden and capacity. If both men and women are allotted mandated time to attend to family, and both men and women warrant access to funding for their employers, then companies would lose incentives to discriminate because presumably everyone would want their time off.

If the federal government compensated businesses, then startups and small businesses wouldn't be exempt from protection, nor unequally stressed relative to bigger businesses. As another commentator pointed out, the UK has a similar model.

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Re:Pregnancy Discrimination Is Rampant Inside America’s Bigg... by simonh on Saturday June 16, 2018 @01:51PM (#17328467)

I don't think companies like Google discriminate because of funding. They discriminate because they want their engineers doing tons of overtime and focusing on their assigned projects at the expense of personal time and private lives. No amount of funding is going to change that culture.

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