EEOC Issues Guidance on Working Caregivers
The U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment Commission (EEOC) has issued a document document, Enforcement Guidance on Unlawful Disparate Treatment of Workers with Caregiving Responsibilities, to help determine how employment laws apply to workers who care for family members.
While it does not make caregivers a protected group, it does help clarify instances when these employees could be discriminated against under federal EEO law.
Examples of disparate treatment of working caregivers under employment law include:
* Treating male caregivers more favorably than female caregivers: Denying women with young children an employment opportunity that is available to men with young children.
* Sex-based stereotyping of working women:
o Reassigning a woman to less desirable projects based on the assumption that, as a new mother, she will be less committed to her job.
o Reducing a female employee’s workload after she assumes full-time care of her niece and nephew based on the assumption that, as a female caregiver, she will not want to work overtime.
* Subjective decisionmaking: Lowering subjective evaluations of a female employee’s work performance after she becomes the primary caregiver of her grandchildren, despite the absence of an actual decline in work performance.
* Assumptions about pregnant workers: Limiting a pregnant worker’s job duties based on pregnancy-related stereotypes.
* Discrimination against working fathers: Denying a male caregiver leave to care for an infant under circumstances where such leave would be granted to a female caregiver.
* Discrimination against women of color: Reassigning a Latina worker to a lower-paying position after she becomes pregnant.
* Stereotyping based on association with an individual with a disability: Refusing to hire a worker who is a single parent of a child with a disability based on the assumption that caregiving responsibilities will make the worker unreliable.
* Hostile work environment affecting caregivers:
o Subjecting a female worker to severe or pervasive harassment because she is a mother with young children.
o Subjecting a female worker to severe or pervasive harassment because she is pregnant or has taken maternity leave.
o Subjecting a worker to severe or pervasive harassment because his wife has a disability.
This look like a step in the right direction for the United States for workers with caregiving responsibilities for both young children, and, elderly or disabled family members.
However, as with any guidelines such as these, the real test will be when employers and employees alike are educated in order to put these ideas into action to provide genuine, measurable help to working caregivers.
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