The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act Has Gone Into Effect
  June 27, 2023 Greetings, Meteor readers, I come to you once again bound up in a moral conundrum. As I’m sure you’re all aware, Taylor Swift will be re-releasing Speak Now and has been singing the album’s most iconic song at her concerts—“Dear John,” the one she allegedly wrote about her relationship with John Mayer. But now that we are on the precipice of this song charting again, Taylor has made an impossible ask of her fans: to stop bullying her ex-boyfriends online. “I am not putting this album out so that you can go and…defend me on the internet against someone you think I might have written a song about 14 million years ago,” she said to a stadium full of fans this week. Basically, she doesn’t want the Swifties to repeat the saga of Jake Gyllenhaal who was raked over the internet coals when she re-released “All Too Well.” That’s cute and all. but how can she make this ask of me when talking shit about men online was essentially how my career got started? It’s like telling a bird not to fly.  In today’s newsletter, we’ve got the pros and cons of a new labor law, plus another reason Canada might be a nice place to live. Shannon Melero  WHAT’S GOING ONBaby steps: After 10 years of hard work by advocates, today the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA) went into effect. The biggest success of this act is that it requires employers to grant time off for employees to recover from childbirth or to access abortion care; however, that time is unpaid. The new law also requires “covered employers” to provide “reasonable” accommodations for pregnant and postpartum workers as long as doing so doesn’t bring “undue hardship” on the employer. As a naturally mistrusting person, I have questions. Let’s dig into the deets. First, what are covered employers? According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), they are any “private and public sector employers with at least 15 employees, Congress, Federal agencies, employment agencies, and labor organizations.” This covers a huge swath of workplaces—but it’s worth knowing that if you work at a small startup or do contract work, you’ll have to rely on your state’s labor laws or Title VII to maybe get an accommodation. (Part-time workers, though, are covered under the PWFA.) And then there’s this little wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing of a phrase: “undue hardship.” Under the PWFA and EEOC regulations workers can request “accommodations” ranging from a longer break time to a better parking spot. For example, if this law had been in effect in 2022 when I was pregnant, I would have had the legal standing to ask The Meteor for a better desk chair to accommodate my work of sitting and typing these newsletters you love. But The Meteor could have claimed that providing that chair was an “undue hardship”—in which case I’d file a complaint with the EEOC, but my kid would be a toddler by the time I got my chair. And that’s what’s at the root of my concern here: The law is predicated on employers operating in good faith with pregnant and postpartum workers. Historically, that just isn’t what happens; while most workplace accommodations are inexpensive and easy to implement, employers in the very recent past have denied simple things like water bottles and extended breaks simply because they hold all the cards. Granted, this law is a huge step forward in protecting pregnant workers’ rights. But perhaps it’s less of a destination and more of a starting point to do even more for pregnant and postpartum workers. AND: 
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