Bobbi Bockoras, Breastfeeding Mom, Allegedly Forced By Employer To Pump On Dirty Floor
Last edited Sun Nov 10, 2013, 01:22 AM - Edit history (1)
Snip
When the ACA went into effect on March 23, 2010, it amended the nation’s arterial labor law, the FLSA, to set new workplace standards around breastfeeding and lactation. Companies must now offer new mothers “reasonable” (unpaid) break time to pump milk. They must also arrange for a “private, non-bathroom place,” “shielded from view and free from intrusion from coworkers and the public,” in which the milk can be pumped, up until a year after the employee has given birth. Furthermore, employers are forbidden to “retaliate” against workers who complain about their bosses’ lack of compliance.
But following weeks of alleged harassment and discrimination, Bobbi Bockoras, a six-year employee at Saint Gobain Verallia, a glass-bottling factory in Alleghany, Pa., found herself seated on a dirty floor, surrounded by dead bugs, pump in hand. When she had first requested a space to express milk for her infant daughter, Lyla, she’d been directed to the bathroom. She’d protested, and the plant had upgraded her to the first-aid room, where she was allegedly heckled by male coworkers shouting and pounding on the door. Her next option was a room with glass walls and no lock on the entrance. Then a shower room. Finally, Bockoras writes on the ACLU’s blog,
When Bockoras continued to complain, the company issued a heartfelt apology, offered her two weeks paid vacation, and resolved to start abiding by federal labor laws. Oops! No, they didn’t: According to Bockoras, they switched the new mother from her day shift to a rotating schedule of nights and early mornings, refused to explain why, ignored a note from her doctor saying she should keep more regular hours, and proceeded to tell her that she would experience harassment “regardless of what shift I was on.” It didn’t help that some jokesters allegedly covered the doorknob to her lactation cell with grease and metal shards. “They've never identified the culprits and no steps were taken to train my colleagues to prevent further harassment,” Bockoras writes. After 10 weeks in this abyss of nursing humiliation, the new mom’s ability to produce breast milk began to suffer, and she had to start feeding her daughter formula. That was when she began to pursue legal recourse, reaching out to the ACLU, the Women’s Law Project, and the firm Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, which is now working on the case pro bono.
More:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/08/bobbi-bockoras-breastfeeding-mom_n_4241285.html#slide=719525
Got it, fetus sacred. Once born the mother and child are dirt. Discriminated against by her company and harassed by her fellow male MORAN coworkers.
Bobbi and her daughter, Lyla
https://www.aclu.org/blog/womens-rights/106-degrees-and-dead-bugs-good-enough-breastfeeding-moms
HT to Major Nikon for the pic, post 6 ~
= new reply since forum marked as read
There was a case in his Federal Court in Houston where he said that breastfeeding was not related to pregnancy, so the Texas Medical Association helpfully filed an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief, explaining the relationship between pregnancy and breastfeeding, and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Judge Hughes' dismissal of the case and remanded it back to him for trial, since he did not understand that discrimination against a breastfeeding mother is part of discriminating against pregnant women and new mothers generally.
I wonder about some of these men who know nothing about female biology, when presumably they have wives, sisters, mothers and daughters.
"We value each and every employee..." 
The company calls themselves a world wide leader in glass packaging with 53 locations around the world (13 in the US.) The Allegheny location opened in 1900.
Nice website. sharing their vision, core values, stategy and policy. They need to live up to their promises.
Bobbi Bockoras is fighting a battle for all women, and we need to support and thank her.
These assholes are the same as the ones complaining that the ACA now prohibits women being charged more than men and that health issues like maternity are treated as shared risk just like any other health concern.
