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Family
Responsibilities Discrimination (FRD) is
employment discrimination against workers based on their
family caregiving responsibilities. Pregnant women,
mothers and fathers of young children, and employees
with aging parents or sick spouses or partners may
encounter FRD. They may be rejected for hire, passed
over for promotion, demoted, harassed, or terminated –
despite good performance – simply because their
employers make personnel decisions based on
stereotypical notions of how they will or should act
given their family responsibilities.
FRD affects men and women across the
income spectrum and employers in every industry. Cases have included those
in low-wage jobs (grocery clerks, nurses’ aides),
pink-collar jobs (administrative assistants, teachers),
blue-collar jobs (police, firefighters), and
professional/managerial jobs (lawyers, doctors,
executives).
Here are some examples of FRD:
- firing
or demoting employees when they become
pregnant;
- passing
over highly qualified mothers for hire or promotion in
favor of less qualified fathers or women without
children;
- firing
employees without valid business reasons when they
return from maternity or paternity leave;
- denying
flexibility to employees who want it for child care
reasons, while allowing flexibility to employees for
non-family reasons (e.g., to participate on a sports
team);
- firing
employees whose spouses or elderly parents become
disabled for fear of increased absenteeism or higher
health insurance premiums; and
- fabricating
work infractions or performance deficiencies to
justify dismissal of employees with family
responsibilities.
The Center for
WorkLife Law (WorkLife Law or WLL) is a nonprofit
research and advocacy group that works to identify,
prevent, and eliminate family responsibilities
discrimination. To do this, WLL
uses a unique 360 degree approach, working with a wide
array of stakeholders. These include
both employees and employers, both plaintiff- and
management-side employment lawyers, unions and their
lawyers, as well as policymakers, researchers, and the
press.
WorkLife Law is housed at the University of California
Hastings
College of the
Law.
and supported by grants, university funding, and private
donations.
WLL's work is made possible through support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, The Rockefeller Family Fund, The Wallace A. Gerbode Foundation, the Women's Bar Association of D.C. Foundation, Abigail Disney, and the University of California
Hastings
College of the
Law. |
