Chapter 3 Discussion January 18, 2010

I want to start this out by saying that for the last half of this chapter I was in training for every job I've ever had, and that's a lot of jobs. Okay, down to business.

Discrimination in the workplace is such a tough subject, if you look at the laws and legislation that have been set forth at a distance then it looks pretty basic. Don't say something stupid about anybody's race, gender, religion, disabilities, etc even in jest. The more you look at it, though, the more sketchy and difficult to navigate it becomes.

I was amazed at the book's examples of discrimination against pregnant workers, especially the one where the CEO told the woman who turned down a promotion while she was pregnant that she showed a lack of dedication and she should just leave. I started thinking about it, and I realized that I didn't even think of that as a type of discrimination. Not hiring someone that is already pregnant, or if there are cutbacks letting go of the women that are near their due dates just seemed like an easy and smart way to bypass the issue of having to figure out what to do about making up for the loss of work when the women leave for maternity leave. The more I read about it, though, I began to think about if one of my friends or I was pregnant and our employers just decided to let us go, or we couldn't get a job because we were going to be gone in a few months seems ridiculous. As we discussed in the last chapter people are not staying in their jobs for as long as they used to, so even if the woman was gone for only a few days to a few months after giving birth the company should have policies in place to prepare for these types of occurrences just as they should be prepared if someone was injured and unable to work or became ill and had to be out of work for a short amount of time.

How can we be more aware of pregnancy discrimination? How can we help prevent pregnancy discrimination? What sorts of policies and procedures could we have in place for employees that become pregnant or future employees that are already pregnant to prevent any discrimination and to handle the workload when they are gone?