Can someone be forced to start maternity leave?
daphne612
1 Post
My friend is roughly 37 weeks pregnant. She is in perfect health, according to her and her doctor. She has stated several times that she plans to work right up until she has the baby. Her doctor has told her she can, as long as it doesn't begin to create any complications. According to the FMLA laws here in Indiana, she is eligible for up to twelve weeks of maternity leave. She has made our boss aware that she doesn't plan on taking all twelve weeks because she cannot afford to, but, she would definatly be out for at least six weeks. Today, she came into work and was told that she was no longer on the schedule and thay gave her papers to fill out about her maternity absence. She was told to return them by Monday. Essentially, our boss told her that her Maternity leave was beginning as of Monday, March 9th. She cannot afford to just be out of work if she's capable of working. She can't really afford to be out for her leave, but she and her husband have been very careful about saving to get them by when she won't be getting paid. What happens, though, if she doesn't go into labor for two weeks or more? How can our boss dictate when her maternity leave starts? Does anyone have ANY ideas I can pass on to her?
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[quote user="daphne612"]My friend is roughly 37 weeks pregnant. She is in perfect health, according to her and her doctor. She has stated several times that she plans to work right up until she has the baby. Her doctor has told her she can, as long as it doesn't begin to create any complications. According to the FMLA laws here in Indiana, she is eligible for up to twelve weeks of maternity leave. She has made our boss aware that she doesn't plan on taking all twelve weeks because she cannot afford to, but, she would definatly be out for at least six weeks. Today, she came into work and was told that she was no longer on the schedule and thay gave her papers to fill out about her maternity absence. She was told to return them by Monday. Essentially, our boss told her that her Maternity leave was beginning as of Monday, March 9th. She cannot afford to just be out of work if she's capable of working. She can't really afford to be out for her leave, but she and her husband have been very careful about saving to get them by when she won't be getting paid. What happens, though, if she doesn't go into labor for two weeks or more? How can our boss dictate when her maternity leave starts? Does anyone have ANY ideas I can pass on to her?[/quote]
I don't know anything about Indiana laws pertaining to maternity leave. The Pregnancy Discrimination Act, an amendment to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, essentially says that you can't treat pregnancy or its complications any differently than you would any other health issue. If someone was scheduled for non-elective, non-emergency gall bladder surgery on the 15 of the month, would you normally consider telling them they have to go on leave earlier than that? That sounds odd, so this sounds like an odd treatment of a pregnant individual.
Now, from the other side of the desk, putting on my HR practitioner hat, I have to admit a certain degree of scepticism whenever I hear a story about a friend's work situation as told by the friend. A lot of time in the trenches suggests that sometimes not all the information is available when your only source is the complainant. I know you say her doctor says she is in perfect health but, unless this friend is you, I doubt that you really know what her doctor has said. I know you say she reports being in perfect health but, since you probably don't really know what her doctor has said, you don't really know if that is true (and doctors can be wrong, anyway, ask anybody who works in workers' comp). However, being in perfect health and being pregnant, while not mutually exclusive, are not exactly the same thing. It is possible that your friend and her employer essentially disagree about how to interpret what her doctor has written and she doesn't like the outcome of the Company's response. I've sent plenty of people home due to illness or injury who were claiming they could still work. I'm sympathetic to the fact that people can't afford to lose work time but, in my HR practitioner cap, I'm an agent for the Company's best interests, which does not permit exposing employees to injury (and the Company to lawsuits) or to pay employees for suboptimal performance or to perform work that is not needed simply to give them hours. People will say they are 100%, even when they are not, when there's money on the line.
If your friend's employer is a small company with no HR, they may be making a serious mistake. If your friend's employer is a large company with plenty of HR, they still may be making a mistake but it's more likely that you aren't getting the whole story.
I have faced a similar issue. We look at this differently. We do not term the absence as maternity leave. We have a 'Modified Duty' policy that covers absences or inabilities to perform an essential job function due to medical conditions, injury, illnesses or inability to don safety equipment and presenting a safety hazard for other employees or the public. We do not differentiate pregnancy.
If a provider cannot don the safety boots or turn out coat due to an injury, illness, or medical condition the employee is removed from service. We have two options. If there is meaningful available modified duty for them to perform then that is what they are assigned. If there is no meaningful modified duty then they are placed on FML until such time they may return to their job function. A heavily pregnant employee is not relieved from duty due to her pregnancy but because she cannot don safety equipment and will be a hazard to herself, fellow employees and the public. This would be the same if an employee had a broken foot. All employees are treated the same for the same reason.
Basically an employer cannot force maternity leave under PDA. But an employer can regulate safety if the employer would do the same thing for similar circumstances.