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Minerva
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A reproductive issue anti-choice and pro-choice can agree on


Did UPS Discriminate Against A Pregnant Worker By Letting Her Go?

This is a question being decided on by the US Supreme Court today.

Most of the packages Peggy Young had to pick up at UPS were letters and small packages. Lifting more than 20 pounds was rare, but when she told them she was pregnant and asked for light duty, they gave her the choice of taking unpaid leave or quitting her job. Not only did she lose her paycheck, but she also lost her medical insurance at a time when she really needed it.


Representing Peggy Young in the Supreme Court on Wednesday, University of Michigan law professor Samuel Bagenstos will tell the justices that drivers who lost their licenses were assigned light duty until they could get their licenses back — in other words, that nonpregnant workers with temporary disabilities were treated more favorably than pregnant workers.

He says that UPS had drivers who had strokes and hypertension who were reassigned to light duty to allow them to get their health back so they could once again qualify for driving. "And that's exactly the same treatment that UPS refused to give Peggy Young," he contends.


UPS did make appropriate changes to their policy after the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, but the US Postal Service still has the same type of discriminatory policy that UPS had.


Brief of Amici Curiae Pro-Life Organizations and the Judicial Education Project in Support of Petitioner Peggy Young (pdf)

Amici support the goals of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) to prevent discrimination against pregnant mothers and to reduce pressure on women in the workforce to have an abortion. Economic pressure is a significant factor in many women’s decision to choose abortion over childbirth. Protecting the ability to work can increase true freedom for women, promote the common good, and protect the most vulnerable among us. The PDA protects the unborn child as well as the working mother who faces economic and other difficulties in bearing and raising the child.

When Congress debated the bills that became the PDA, Congress heard testimony from medical experts about the impact of employment on pregnant women and their unborn children. The PDA’s supporters included members of Congress who were concerned about the possibility that women would be forced to choose between their jobs and their unborn children.




This is also a racial issue.

Supreme Court hears pregnancy discrimination case

I don't normally like to use MSNBC as a news source because of their PunditFact scorecard, but I see no way that this could be false:


And several reproductive justice groups that advocate for women of color submitted a brief pointing out that “black women disproportionately hold jobs that require physical exertion that may be unsafe while pregnant … Black women thus are disproportionately put to a Hobson’s choice between the economic security that their current jobs provide and the health of themselves and their children.”


Let's hope the SCOTUS rules in favor of actual people instead of corporations this time.

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12/3/2014, 6:18 pm Link to this post PM Lesigner Girl Read Blog
 
Queenyforever Profile
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Ignore me.

Registered: 01-2007
Province: Just north of the clouds...
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Re: A reproductive issue anti-choice and pro-choice can agree on



Let's hope the SCOTUS rules in favor of actual people instead of corporations this time.


Well, we can hope. *fingers crossed*

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12/5/2014, 7:15 pm Link to this post PM Queenyforever Read Blog
 
Lesigner Girl Profile
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Minerva
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Re: A reproductive issue anti-choice and pro-choice can agree on


I guess they won't be making a decision on it until next year, but it will be really screwed up if they decide in favor of businesses instead of people.

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12/6/2014, 12:46 am Link to this post PM Lesigner Girl Read Blog
 
Morwen Oronor Profile
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Citizen

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There are lots of things wrong with this country, but the one thing they've got right is the protection of employees. It is virtually impossible to fire people today. Even if someone sits at their workstation chatting on the company's phone all day, and doesn't do any work, a supervisor has to talk to them about it three times before reporting them, then there has to be three written warnings before it goes to a higher level. If someone can't do the job, due to pregnancy say, the company is obliged to give her lighter work, or face being taken to the CCMA (a workers' protection government agency) who will then do their own discovery and arbitration before it goes to a court case. We have hardly any work-related court cases now. Employers just let people do pretty much what they like and use performance appraisals and salary increases to either punish or reward people for the work they do. You simply cannot tell anyone "you're fired."
12/7/2014, 6:27 am Link to this post PM Morwen Oronor Read Blog
 
Lesigner Girl Profile
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Minerva
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Re: A reproductive issue anti-choice and pro-choice can agree on


I'm glad your laws protect workers, but I also hope most people there have a better work ethic than a lot of people I see here.

If someone is lazy every day or rude to customers, etc., gets three talks, three written warnings, goes to a higher level, and continues their bad behavior, how much more does it take to fire that person?

Also, is there an expiration date on those warnings? Say, if someone receives the third written warning and stops their bad behavior to avoid being fired, is there a point when they go back to the verbal warning stage so they can resume their bad behavior without getting to that higher level?

I worked at a unionized factory once, and there were a lot of lazy people there. I was doing about 1500 parts per shift, while people on other shifts doing the same job were only doing 600-800, and a manager told me to slow down. emoticon

How are your laws for hiring? Are they good for preventing discrimination?

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12/7/2014, 8:12 pm Link to this post PM Lesigner Girl Read Blog
 
Morwen Oronor Profile
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Citizen

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Re: A reproductive issue anti-choice and pro-choice can agree on



Lesigner Girl said:

I'm glad your laws protect workers, but I also hope most people there have a better work ethic than a lot of people I see here.



No, not really. It's made people lazy and indifferent to their jobs. They can't lose them, not really even though some people claim they can, so they don't take pride in their work.


If someone is lazy every day or rude to customers, etc., gets three talks, three written warnings, goes to a higher level, and continues their bad behavior, how much more does it take to fire that person?


Moving them to another job is easier than firing them. Seriously, you have to go through the process and literally show them to not be fit to work in any job before you can fire them.


Also, is there an expiration date on those warnings? Say, if someone receives the third written warning and stops their bad behavior to avoid being fired, is there a point when they go back to the verbal warning stage so they can resume their bad behavior without getting to that higher level?


Yes, there is an expiration date.
People can be fired, but the offence has to be something really terrible, and even then, they're given the opportunity to defend themselves, and the actual process of letting them go, goes through paid suspension, hearings, listening to their defence and so on, and can take up to a year.


I worked at a unionized factory once, and there were a lot of lazy people there. I was doing about 1500 parts per shift, while people on other shifts doing the same job were only doing 600-800, and a manager told me to slow down. emoticon


Yep, that's about it. I could tell some stories I've heard about how eager, dedicated workers are abused by even the people who should be promoting them for their diligence.


How are your laws for hiring? Are they good for preventing discrimination?


Only if you're "previously disadvantaged" are they good for preventing discrimination. Black (African) women are first on the short list for every job, even if they're way less qualified than a white man who is at the bottom of the short list for the short list for the short list. It's extremely difficult for white men to be considered for any job that a white woman, Indian man, coloured (mixed race) man, black man, Indian woman, coloured woman, black woman, can do. There are no white waiters in our restaurants, no white receptionists in our hotels, white nurses except in very privately-owned hospitals and even then they might be in person in charge of a ward, but the nurses are all black women.

It's understandable of course that "black empowerment" will make up for the injustices of the past, but it's hard for young white men to get into jobs, or even into places at university if there are people of other races applying. They have to have skills that are simply not there in people of other races, or they have to have friends who've suggested them for projects, which become contracts, and eventually because they're part of the furniture, a permanent job. But even then it's hard for the job to become permanent. So they live with the constant fear of losing their jobs. The best way for young white people here to be employed and to stay employed is to employ themselves, and then if they're successful, they're expected to provide employment for black people first.

White South Africa did a really good job at creating the problem. I used to tell my parents that this was going to happen. I used to say that if they allowed the native people of the country to get their children properly educated, the problems we now have would be averted. For instance had we had properly-trained electrical engineers in place long before the job of providing the country with electricity fell into the chaos it's in at the moment, we would've had a proper system in place. But no, the native people of the country were employed to do the donkey work, while the privileged few ordered them about, not teaching and explaining why they were doing what they were doing. Then when the "black empowerment" program was put into place, the privileged few were given retirement packages, and the workers were put in charge, without having the necessary knowledge to do the jobs they were given. Thus we are now living with rolling blackouts because the power stations are collapsing all around the country.
12/8/2014, 5:12 am Link to this post PM Morwen Oronor Read Blog
 
Lesigner Girl Profile
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Minerva
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Re: A reproductive issue anti-choice and pro-choice can agree on


What a mess! They're oppressing a previously-privileged group, and privileging a previously-oppressed group that is largely uneducated because they weren't allowed to be educated before becoming the privileged group. Affirmative action makes sense, but what they're doing isn't affirmative action, and it doesn't level the playing field; it turns it upside down.

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12/10/2014, 5:29 am Link to this post PM Lesigner Girl Read Blog
 
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Citizen

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Yep. So the result is that every couple of years we have rolling backouts because the people in charge of the electricity are undertrained and don't understand the requirements of first world electricity supply. This is also the problem with our education. They don't understand why superior education is necessary in order to be an educator. And so it goes on. We have to remember that the system took 500 years to break, fixing it isn't going to happen in 20 years.
12/10/2014, 5:01 pm Link to this post PM Morwen Oronor Read Blog
 
Lesigner Girl Profile
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Minerva
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Re: A reproductive issue anti-choice and pro-choice can agree on



This is also the problem with our education. They don't understand why superior education is necessary in order to be an educator.


This. How can the problem be fixed if people don't understand this?

It's one thing to lack knowledge about something, but it's another to believe that uneducated and undereducated people can be educate others. This sounds like the Dunning-Kruger effect to me. The people in charge don't understand what it takes to get things running properly again. emoticon

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12/11/2014, 2:28 am Link to this post PM Lesigner Girl Read Blog
 
Kaunisto Profile
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Re: A reproductive issue anti-choice and pro-choice can agree on


When analyzing Finland's continuous (if slightly weakening) PISA success, it's been said one of the main reasons is that our teachers are required to have wider education than almost anywhere in the world, particularly in psychology etc. besides just knowing the subjects they are teaching.

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12/11/2014, 12:44 pm Link to this post PM Kaunisto
 


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