A woman shouldn’t have to choose between her job and her health — or the health of her unborn child.
Thirty states have laws to address this concern, requiring employers to offer pregnant workers accommodations such as additional breaks, help with manual labor and schedule modifications.
Indiana has no such law.
While many Hoosier employers do the right thing by voluntarily providing accommodations for pregnant women, others demand that pregnant employees continue to work under the same rules and conditions as other workers.
A bill that would have fixed the problem failed in the Republican-dominated state Senate in 2020. This year, two additional bills died without a hearing. Members of the GOP supermajority contend such legislation would place an outsized burden on employers, particularly small businesses.
Instead, Republican legislators are supporting a weak compromise measure.
House Bill 1309 would require employers to respond in writing to pregnancy-accommodation requests and would prohibit employers from retaliating against employees who make those requests. But the bill doesn’t require employers to grant pregnancy accommodations.
The House approved the proposal, but it barely passed, by a 6-4 vote, through the Senate Pensions and Labor Committee on Wednesday. Some of the Republicans on the committee criticized the bill as toothless while committee Democrats hoped for amendments on the Senate floor, where the bill is headed for a vote.
HB 1309 would do nothing to address Indiana’s woeful record of infant mortality and maternal mortality. In 2018, Indiana had the nation’s 11th highest rate of infant deaths and the third highest rate of maternal deaths, according to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The World Health Organization defines maternal mortality as “the annual number of female deaths from any cause related to or aggravated by pregnancy or its management … during pregnancy and childbirth or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy.”
The management of pregnancy, for working women, can be dependent on workplace conditions.
Gov. Eric Holcomb seems to understand this, even if his GOP colleagues in the legislature do not.
“Women make up over half of Indiana’s workforce and should expect reasonable accommodations at their workplace, which often comes at little or no cost to an employer,” the governor said during his State of the State address this year. “Let’s get this done for the well-being and security of Indiana’s current and future working mothers.”
Frustrated by his own party’s reluctance to protect pregnant workers, Holcomb is pursuing an executive order to provide pregnancy accommodations for state employees.
That would be just a small step in the right direction. Indiana really needs a dramatic leap forward to protect pregnant workers.
