After stalling out in the Legislature in 2016, a bill seeking to expand worker protections for pregnant employees in Massachusetts is moving through session this year.
Under the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, employers would be required to provide “reasonable accommodations” to pregnant workers. This would include allowing frequent and/or longer breaks, temporary transfers to less hazardous or less strenuous roles, modified work schedules, and seating in cases when jobs require standing for long periods of time. The bill also proposes that nursing mothers returning to work are given adequate time and private space for breast pumping.
Businesses and employees will engage in a collaborative process to determine effective and reasonable accommodations, House Speaker Robert DeLeo told the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce in March. Employers who demonstrate that compliance with this bill would create “undue hardship”—significant difficulty or expense—would be exempt, and it would fall to businesses to prove the existence of this hardship. Previous iterations of the bill offered no flexibility for employers, even if they had made multiple attempts to accommodate pregnant workers, as well as extended the protections of the bill to job applicants. This bill is restricted to just current employees.
NFIB/MA says the bill is unnecessary.
“The legislation would further regulate the workplace with specific rules covering actions that many small businesses already take,” said Bill Vernon, NFIB/MA state director. “NFIB will continue to work with the Legislature to minimize the impact on small businesses that do not have the facilities or the resources for accommodation that large businesses have.”
