In a Tennessee warehouse supplying Verizon customers with their phones and tablets, pregnant women are routinely worked to the point of losing their pregnancies, lifting boxes up to 45 pounds through long shifts in heat that can reach more than 100 degrees. And there is no law that says their employer can’t do this to them. Sure, there’s the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, but even when it’s enforced, it has loopholes you can drive a 747 through. 

If companies “treat their nonpregnant employees terribly, they have every right to treat their pregnant employees terribly as well,” said Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York, who has pushed for stronger federal protections for expecting mothers.

That’s why Democrats keep introducing the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, to strengthen protections for pregnant women. But Republicans won’t consider it, not that this stops them from proclaiming themselves to be protectors of family values.

Early miscarriages are very common and are typically associated with chromosomal abnormalities rather than anything a woman in early pregnancy might do. But that’s not what the New York Times is reporting on here. Several of the cases cited in this article involved later pregnancy loss, well into the second trimester when miscarriages are much less common, and even into stillbirth territory. One of the women interviewed for the story delivered a baby at 20 weeks that lived for 10 minutes. “My husband and I watched her die,” she said. This is much, much less common, and when it comes after a woman has worked for hours lifting heavy boxes, against her doctor’s advice and after her employer has refused to give her light duty, it should be a crime. That’s not all, either. After a worker in the same warehouse died on the job, “In Facebook posts at the time and in recent interviews, employees said supervisors told them to keep working as the woman lay dead.”

Verizon said “We have no tolerance—zero tolerance—for this sort of alleged behavior,” except, apparently, to the extent that it has been tolerating the behavior right up until a newspaper started reporting on it. The company says it is investigating the workers’ claims.

This blog was originally published at Daily Kos on October 23, 2018. Reprinted with permission. 

About the Author: Laura Clawson is labor editor at Daily Kos.