Moral obligation to disclose pregnancy/parenthood to potential employers

[Sunrazor]

Pregnancy is not a “medical condition,” it’s not a disease or an injury or anything even out of the ordinary. It is a perfectly normal thing that happens to half of the world’s population.

When I worked at a call center, we interviewed obviously pregnant women all the time. We understood they needed the job because they needed the income and the benefits (mostly for their little ones – nobody we hired while they were pregnant would have qualified for benefits in time to pay for the birth expenses.) We hired 'em, worked around their pregnancies, treated 'em like the good people they were. In return we got good, loyal employees who rarely missed work and did a good job for us. What the hell’s the deal?

[Acid_Lamp]

@Kalhoun

I don’t see how you figure it as cheating. Both ethically and legally, the employer has no right to expect to know what anyone’s family planning outlook is. If there is a woman of child-bearing age in a company’s employ, the chance of pregnancy-related time off is there. But so is the chance for injury-, illness-, or family leave-related time off. These are all issues that can come up at any time and can also be pre-existing at the time of employment.

bolding mine

Ethically, you have an obligation to make any prosepective employer aware of such conditions that might impact your ability to do your job. Pregnancy is a natural condition, but one which vastly impacts attendance possibly during and certainly afterwards. Honesty works both ways. I don’t see this as being different than any other obligation which will affect your ability to attend work. A good employer will work around it. Those who give you a pat dismissal aren’t they type you’d want to work for anyway.

[Kalhoun]

@ParentalAdvisory

Does Stephen Hawking have the right to be a fork lift operator?

If he’s qualified, sure.

[WhyNot]

@Kalhoun

All these people still have the right to make a living.

If all of them say, “sorry…that’s not going to work out for me” then the employee is effectively being deprived of the right to work.

What right to make a living? Where is the right OF work guaranteed? (Everyone has the *freedom *TO work, barring jail, prison or house arrest, but we are not guaranteed a job.) Even your hypothetical pregnant woman can be denied hire for any other reason, under the law as it stands now and under rational thinking - except in those godless commie states. Are you a godless commie, Kalhoun?

Likewise if the employee just decides they don’t like the job or don’t want to continue to work for any reason. Why single out pregnancy when the exact same situation can come up for reasons unrelated to child-bearing?

As I said back there in t’other thread, an employer assumes a baseline likelihood of flakes, thieves and just bad karma. There is always the possibility that things won’t work out. With pregnancy (or adoption or scheduled surgery with long recovery or with a planned move out of state or any other KNOWN reason why the person will no longer be working at the job in less than a year) there is a known and nearly certain chance that your assumed permanent employee will be leaving or taking more time off than her seniority would allow. And yes, as I also said in the other thread, this applies to men who plan to stay home with the baby beyond any sick, personal, vacation and paternity days they’ve earned, and does NOT apply if the mother intends to return to work after using only any sick, personal, vacation or maternity days she’s earned.

I don’t single out pregnancy. But yes, pregnancy is one of those known quantities that should, ethically, be disclosed when one is applying for a permanent position. It takes the playing field from “I will probably be here in a year, but you never know” to “I know I won’t be here in a year.” Those are two different hiring scenarios, and I believe to be ethical you need to let the person hiring know which one they’re facing.

And those who keep saying that “most” companies have contingency plans or human resources or other employees to cover the slack in order to deal with this seem to be forgetting that MOST companies in the country are small owner-run companies with less than a dozen employees. It’s far more expensive and difficult for a small business owner to deal with high turnover. The baseline is accepted and logical cost of doing business. The near-certainty of pregnancy should be entered into with informed consent.

[Kalhoun]

@Acid Lamp

bolding mine

Ethically, you have an obligation to make any prosepective employer aware of such conditions that might impact your ability to do your job. Pregnancy is a natural condition, but one which vastly impacts attendance possibly during and certainly afterwards. Honesty works both ways. I don’t see this as being different than any other obligation which will affect your ability to attend work. A good employer will work around it. Those who give you a pat dismissal aren’t they type you’d want to work for anyway.

I disagree. Ethically, your responsibility is to work in order to support yourself and your family. What is unethical, as far as I’m concerned, is to go on the dole and expect your entire state to support your family and maternity expenses when you’re capable of work. If full disclosure threatens your ability to work, and it’s not illegal to withhold information, your first obligation is to find gainful employment.

[WhyNot]

@Kalhoun

I disagree. Ethically, your responsibility is to work in order to support yourself and your family. What is unethical, as far as I’m concerned, is to go on the dole and expect your entire state to support your family and maternity expenses when you’re capable of work. If full disclosure threatens your ability to work, and it’s not illegal to withhold information, your first obligation is to find gainful employment.

So if it was made legal, would the ethics suddenly change? Is your ethic determined by the law? Is it impossible to have an unethical law?

[Duckster]

@catsix

My contention is that the first situation, interviewing while pregnant and knowing that there’s going to be a big need for a lot of time off in short oder, is the one where there’s an issue. In that case I do think that the person doing the hiring should be able to choose whether to hire someone with the fact that the person will definitely have an attendance issue.

And that decision would be in violation of the law.

An employer cannot refuse to hire a pregnant woman because of her pregnancy, because of a pregnancy-related condition or because of the prejudices of co-workers, clients, or customers.

Source: http://www.eeoc.gov/types/pregnancy.html

12/23/2002 – PHOENIX - The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) today announced it has settled a pregnancy discrimination lawsuit against retail giant Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., based in Bentonville, Arkansas, for $220,000 in damages and other relief for its failure to hire a female applicant due to her pregnancy.

– snip –

The EEOC filed this lawsuit in 1994 alleging that Wal-Mart refused to rehire Jamey Stern at their Green Valley, Arizona, store because she told them she was pregnant in November of 1991. The litigation was subjected to repeated trials and appeals before all issues were finally resolved.

According to the lawsuit, Ms. Stern was told by the Assistant Manager to “come back after she had the baby,” after informing him that she was pregnant. Ms. Stern was not aware that refusing to hire someone because they are pregnant is against the law until she read an article in a magazine in her doctor’s office.

Source: Story Here.

[Kalhoun]

@WhyNot

What right to make a living? Where is the right OF work guaranteed? (Everyone has the *freedom *TO work, barring jail, prison or house arrest, but we are not guaranteed a job.) Even your hypothetical pregnant woman can be denied hire for any other reason, under the law as it stands now and under rational thinking - except in those godless commie states. Are you a godless commie, Kalhoun?

Let me rephrase that; people have a right to support their families by any legal means they’re qualified to perform. (There…am I slightly less pink? ) What would the alternative be? Welfare?

As I said back there in t’other thread, an employer assumes a baseline likelihood of flakes, thieves and just bad karma. There is always the possibility that things won’t work out. With pregnancy (or adoption or scheduled surgery with long recovery or with a planned move out of state or any other KNOWN reason why the person will no longer be working at the job in less than a year) there is a known and nearly certain chance that your assumed permanent employee will be leaving or taking more time off than her seniority would allow. And yes, as I also said in the other thread, this applies to men who plan to stay home with the baby beyond any sick, personal, vacation and paternity days they’ve earned, and does NOT apply if the mother intends to return to work after using only any sick, personal, vacation or maternity days she’s earned.

I don’t single out pregnancy. But yes, pregnancy is one of those known quantities that should, ethically, be disclosed when one is applying for a permanent position. It takes the playing field from “I will probably be here in a year, but you never know” to “I know I won’t be here in a year.” Those are two different hiring scenarios, and I believe to be ethical you need to let the person hiring know which one they’re facing.

And those who keep saying that “most” companies have contingency plans or human resources or other employees to cover the slack in order to deal with this seem to be forgetting that MOST companies in the country are small owner-run companies with less than a dozen employees. It’s far more expensive and difficult for a small business owner to deal with high turnover. The baseline is accepted and logical cost of doing business. The near-certainty of pregnancy should be entered into with informed consent.

How many attempts at employment should a pregnant woman make? What if everyone turns her down? At some point, isn’t she entitled to put her best interests first?

[lee]

So those of you who think it is unethical for a pregnant woman not to disclose her pregnancy, do you think it ethical for companies to take her pregnancy under consideration when making hiring decisions? How it is ethical for them to knowingly violate the law when they benefit greatly from the law and its enforcement in general? Why is it ethical when it may unlevel the playing field between them and competitors who do follow the law?

[catsix]

Duckster said:
And that decision would be in violation of the law.

And this thread isn’t about what the law says, it’s about what’s a ‘moral obligation’. So while I am aware that the law forces an employer’s hand, I don’t think that it should.

There are many instances in which I think that the law is wrong. This is one of those instances.

lee said:
So those of you who think it is unethical for a pregnant woman not to disclose her pregnancy, do you think it ethical for companies to take her pregnancy under consideration when making hiring decisions?

Given that I just said it should be legal for someone to not hire a pregnant woman because she’s pregnant, I think my answer to this is obvious. I think the person doing the hiring should absolutely be able to say that they think the pregnant woman is too much a risk for absenteeism and for leaving the job in a short amount of time and not hire her.

How it is ethical for them to knowingly violate the law when they benefit greatly from the law and its enforcement in general?

I don’t think the law is right in this case.

Why is it ethical when it may unlevel the playing field between them and competitors who do follow the law?

Why do you automatically assume that whatever doesn’t benefit the pregnant women the most is ‘unethical’? I don’t consider it unethical for a person hiring a new employee to want someone who is less likely to have an absenteeism problem, or someone who is less likely to leave the job for weeks shortly after being hired, possibly to not come back at all.

Then again I don’t think the playing field needs to be artificially leveled.

[Kalhoun]

Is “no one would hire me because I told them I was pregnant” a valid reason to go on welfare? This is a serious question. Would welfare folks tell me to keep my yap shut about my pregnancy or would they just nod their heads and cut me a check? A check that wouldn’t be sufficient to live on, by the way.

[LavenderBlue]

The only reason I was looking for a job in the first place while pregnant is because I had been recently laid off. My employer gave our department of six exactly an hour’s notice before laying us all off. The layoffs included a person receiving chemotherapy treatments who left the office crying her eyes out and wondering about COBRA. Not exactly moral behavior from them I think.

BTW, catsix I did not take off any time while pregnant for doctor’s visits. My doctor’s office (like many OB’s) has late hours.

Sunrazor pregnancy is a perfectly natural condition but four states consider it a disability and provide disability benefits to pregnant woman.

I did not give birth until I was 32. At that time I’d been in the workforce on at least a part-time basis since I was sixteen. Why would it be wrong to claim benefits after I’d paid into system for more than a decade?

[catsix]

LavenderBlue said:
BTW, catsix I did not take off any time while pregnant for doctor’s visits. My doctor’s office (like many OB’s) has late hours.

I guess you scheduled the kid’s birth to be on a weekend and you were back at work on Monday?

[WhyNot]

@Kalhoun

Let me rephrase that; people have a right to support their families by any legal means they’re qualified to perform. (There…am I slightly less pink? ) What would the alternative be? Welfare?

Since this is The World According to Me and not the way it is, I’d say family first, charitable social help (churches, not-for-profits) second, and state funded welfare third.

Of course, in The World According to Me, we also have universal healthcare which includes maternity coverage and the school system would be extended downwards from 3 year olds to include infants. Basically, state run daycare for parents who choose them.

('Cause see, I AM thisfar from a pinko commie, especially when it comes to the Care and Feeding of Houseapes.)

How many attempts at employment should a pregnant woman make? What if everyone turns her down? At some point, isn’t she entitled to put her best interests first?

I just simply don’t believe this is an issue in the world as it is. Sorry, but I don’t. There are at least 200 temp agencies at Monster.com. There is low-wage high-turnover work. And there are compassionate, wonderful employers out there who will be glad to hire pregnant women and not be bitter about it as long as they KNOW you’re pregnant at hiring. (Anecites: me (twice) and **Dangerosa **in the Other Thread.) If a pregnant woman honestly simply can’t find
ANY work, it’s because her job market sucks. And yes, it might not be her first or second choice. But as I’ve told my whiny miserable niece, flippin’ burgers is honest work, and if it’s all you can get, put on the damn paper hat and get to work! (In the World According to Me, you also get MORE Welfare benefits if you get a crappy job, instead of it being too expensive to work a low-paying job.)

But yes, I do believe that, just like any other time you’re willing and able to work but can’t find employment, you should be able to draw on unemployment. Each week, of course, applying for jobs and turning in unemployment forms like anyone else. If you haven’t worked enough weeks to be eligible for unemployment, then how are you any different from a man who is willing to work but can’t find work and isn’t eligible for unemployment?

And like anyone else who’s unemployment has run out, you make do. You suck up your pride and apply for WIC and welfare. I would personally prefer to remain ethical and proud and take welfare for a few months than be deceitful and selfish. I can live with myself on beans and rice. I don’t like to live with myself when I behave unethically.

[Voyager]

@catsix

And this thread isn’t about what the law says, it’s about what’s a ‘moral obligation’. So while I am aware that the law forces an employer’s hand, I don’t think that it should.

There are many instances in which I think that the law is wrong. This is one of those instances.

However, in this world that is what the law says, and that has an impact on the moral obligation of the pregnant woman. Since the law says it is illegal to discriminate, and since we know that employers with attitudes like yours will illegally discriminate (example: the one in Duckster’s helpful post, a woman admitting she is pregnant will entice the employer into breaking the law. Is that moral?

If there is a law against relgious discrimination, and employer X loudly states that a person of religion Y can’t be a good employee for some reason, is it immoral for an applicant to refuse to state that she is of that religion? This employers reasons might be as valid to him as yours are to you, but it doesn’t matter - it is illegal to discriminate, and there is no moral obligation to aid in someone committing an illegal act.

Does your concern for an employer extend to not hiring someone who needs to go to the doctor once a month? How about someone who might need an operation?

I think this is just one more example of the position that companies can take from society, but shouldn’t be asked to give, either in support of social goods like supporting families, or taxes.

[Kalhoun]

@WhyNot

Since this is The World According to Me and not the way it is, I’d say family first, charitable social help (churches, not-for-profits) second, and state funded welfare third.

Of course, in The World According to Me, we also have universal healthcare which includes maternity coverage and the school system would be extended downwards from 3 year olds to include infants. Basically, state run daycare for parents who choose them.

('Cause see, I AM thisfar from a pinko commie, especially when it comes to the Care and Feeding of Houseapes.)

I just simply don’t believe this is an issue in the world as it is. Sorry, but I don’t. There are at least 200 temp agencies at Monster.com. There is low-wage high-turnover work. And there are compassionate, wonderful employers out there who will be glad to hire pregnant women and not be bitter about it as long as they KNOW you’re pregnant at hiring. (Anecites: me (twice) and **Dangerosa **in the Other Thread.) If a pregnant woman honestly simply can’t find
ANY work, it’s because her job market sucks. And yes, it might not be her first or second choice. But as I’ve told my whiny miserable niece, flippin’ burgers is honest work, and if it’s all you can get, put on the damn paper hat and get to work! (In the World According to Me, you also get MORE Welfare benefits if you get a crappy job, instead of it being too expensive to work a low-paying job.)

But yes, I do believe that, just like any other time you’re willing and able to work but can’t find employment, you should be able to draw on unemployment. Each week, of course, applying for jobs and turning in unemployment forms like anyone else. If you haven’t worked enough weeks to be eligible for unemployment, then how are you any different from a man who is willing to work but can’t find work and isn’t eligible for unemployment?

And like anyone else who’s unemployment has run out, you make do. You suck up your pride and apply for WIC and welfare. I would personally prefer to remain ethical and proud and take welfare for a few months than be deceitful and selfish. I can live with myself on beans and rice. I don’t like to live with myself when I behave unethically.

There are alternatives, sure. But none of those jobs are going to pay a mortgage, medical care and all the other expenses a person has to cover. It might work for some, but definitely not all. If that’s compounded by a bad job market (something I’ve been lucky to avoid in recent years), you’ve got a huge problem. I just think that when playing the game of Ethics, it’s sometimes more ethical to put your own needs first. After all, that’s what the company is doing.

[Green_Cymbeline]

We should take into account the difference in the type of job we’re talking about…

If it’s a job that requires little training, and that doesn’t require any specialized skill, then I think it’s a perfect fit for the pregnant woman. When she is out on leave, anyone can easily step in and pick up her slack. A temporary employee can be hired to fill in while she is on leave, or she can be easily replaced if she leaves the job altogether.

On the other hand, for a job (like mine) where it takes months for an employee just to be trained in the basics, and where our hiring process is long and arduous, and where we invest a lot of time in picking just the right person and training them… in a position like that, it is NOT a good fit for someone - anyone - who knows for a fact that they will soon be taking months off, or be gone altogether. It’s just plain shitty to leave your coworkers high and dry like that after they have invested all the time in training you, and were counting on you.

[Green_Cymbeline]

@Kalhoun

There are alternatives, sure. But none of those jobs are going to pay a mortgage, medical care and all the other expenses a person has to cover.

Hmm. I guess they should have thought about that before deciding to start a family when they didn’t have sufficient resources at hand.

[Kalhoun]

@nyctea scandiaca

Hmm. I guess they should have thought about that before deciding to start a family when they didn’t have sufficient resources at hand.

There are a million things that can change that would endanger your family whether you’re pregnant or not. Are you saying no one should have children unless they have 21 years worth of money in the bank and a fully paid-off mortgage?

[Acid_Lamp]

@Kalhoun

There are a million things that can change that would endanger your family whether you’re pregnant or not. Are you saying no one should have children unless they have 21 years worth of money in the bank and a fully paid-off mortgage?

No, I believe that you ought to have your financial cards in order before deciding to take on the addition burden of having children. To me at least, this means having one of the partner’s income be sufficient to pay all household neccesities and have a little left over.