For today's weekly cavnesHR newsletter, we are going to talk about the Pregnancy Discrimination Act.
This act became law in 1978 and it is an amendment of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This prohibits sex discrimination on the basis of pregnancy.
So some of the legalese on this. Because of discrimination on the basis of sex includes but are not limited to because of or on the basis of pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions and women affected by pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions. Shall be treated the same for all employment-related purposes, including receipts of benefits and fringe benefit programs as other persons not so affected by similar the ability or inability to do work.
So I know that's kind of dry and legalese. But some real-life situations on what not to do. Suppose you have an open position and you are interviewing for that position. You do a phone interview with a female. She passed and the phone interview was great. She comes in and you see she's six months pregnant. What you cannot do and please don't do this is say, Oh, I see you're pregnant. We can't hire you because you're pregnant.
You are setting yourself up for a lawsuit. Or if you're getting ready to promote someone and it is a competition between a male and female. The female says oh, just let you know I'm pregnant. You can't say, we're going to take you out of consideration for the promotion because you are pregnant, because we don't think you'd handle the job while pregnant.
Pregnancy nowadays is considered a temporary disability. So you have to base both the interview and the promotion or anything related to someone being pregnant to can they do the job when they're not pregnant.
So, please, please, please do not discriminate on this basis or any other basis. You are just setting yourself up for failure. This happens more than you think. I hear stories all the time when people say I went for a job interview and they told me. Can you come back and apply after you have your baby? This happens so many times nowadays. So the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, one of the base HR laws in the U.S.
Thanks for your time today and remember to be great every day.
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