Tucked in the $1.7 trillion bill to fund the government that Congress passed last week are two key provisions aimed at protecting pregnant and nursing workers.
The first measure, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, requires that employers provide pregnant workers with reasonable accommodations, such as access to water, increased bathroom breaks and restrictions on lifting heavy objects.
Separately, the Pump Act expands on legally protected breaks for workers who are nursing babies.
Put together, these provisions are aimed at addressing holes in existing law that have allowed employers in the United States to force pregnant and nursing workers to choose between a paycheck and their health, advocates say. The rules also come as the pandemic has forced employers, and the public, to reexamine how child care disproportionately affects working mothers, many of whom struggled to stay in their jobs or reenter the workforce since the pandemic upended the U.S. economy.
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The measures are included in the sprawling omnibus bill that funded everything from defense spending to emergency aid for Ukraine to election reform. Provisions for working mothersaren’t expected to affect overwhelming swaths of the workforce — fewer than 2 percent of all workers in the United States are pregnant each year, ...
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