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Nanny state at its finest: Democrats hate business

By: Tabitha Hale (Diary)  |  April 9th, 2010 at 08:44 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

I can come up with no other explanation for this part of health care reform:

Nursing mothers will now get additional support, thanks to page 1239 of the health care bill that President Obama recently signed into law. It requires employers to provide “a place, other than a bathroom, that is shielded from view and free from intrusion from co-workers and the public, which may be used by an employee to express breast milk.” Only companies with less than 50 employees can claim it’s an undue hardship.

Women have been breastfed since the beginning of time. They have done just fine without special rooms.

This is not about being anti-breastfeeding. I’m writing this as a woman who strongly believes in breastfeeding. Sure, it’s inconvenient. How is a separate room going to fix this? I’m sorry it’s inconvenient, but come on! What an unnecessary expense. This is another example of how monstrously anti-business this bill is.

Let’s look at this logically. Yes, women need to pump. That can be done in a stall. Forcing businesses to provide a special space is just absurd. Most businesses are going to provide a space like this anyway if they value their employees. The ones that don’t should have the option not to.

Unnecessary cost. There’s no valid logic behind this. Women can handle their business, and if companies want to make it more comfortable for them, then that’s one more reason women should want to work for them.

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  • Fla Mom

    It’s a place for a working mother, whose baby is at daycare or otherwise being taken care of by someone else during the day, to pump milk to store so that the care provider has breast milk to feed the baby when the mom’s at work. When the mom and baby are together, she will nurse the baby directly.

    Yes, it’s very intrusive legislation. There must be some businesses that have few if any women of child-bearing age as employees, but they too will be required to have such a room.

    That said, however, pumping in a bathroom stall isn’t as easy as Tabitha makes it sound. Most toilets in public areas have no lids, so she’s suggesting, what, you sit on the seat clothed, or take your pants down to pump, in addition to lifting your shirt, then manipulating the equipment while trying not to get anything contaminated? Did you hear that floors of public bathrooms are even more heavily contaminated than other surfaces? (Guess what rolls downhill?) Also, if the woman uses an electric pump she may need access to electricity (I pumped *a lot,* and hand-held or batteries just wouldn’t cut it). I had some awkward moments myself when I had to be away from my office and so appreciated the fact that at my usual place of work I had a private office. Not sure what I would have done otherwise, and such situations do either encourage women to nurse their babies or discourage them from doing so. Still, not a reason for the federal government to get involved.

    Fla Mom

    • http://phxg.wordpress.com/ phxg

      weren’t you supposed to be home and barefoot?

      Bad humor aside, your argument, or more specifically their experience is what will propel the bureaucrat to write the codes that will mandate the expressing rooms. There will need to be sinks because “this one time my friend spilled….”. The rooms will need to be floor to ceiling walls with double entry doors because “All men (and some of ‘those’ ladies) will want to sneak a peek at boobies” It’s true because this one time on Mad Men….

      And that’s how it will evolve into a scientifically developed model that will have to be built, inspected, plan reviewed, fire marshal approved and decorated to meet the needs of…how many? And there in lies the real evil.

      Someone will develop a numerical model, they will have to “to be fair” that shows how many rooms will be needed for X number of employees per work location. And if you, the business fails to meet that number, well sanctions will be levied. And really, the Obamacare Law is all about raising revenue.

      • Fla Mom

        were it not for that pesky service obligation I had at the time.

        Mom2oneson (below) is right; it’s a real problem that affects women’s ability to continue nursing their babies, something in which we all should have an interest, for reasons beyond the simply biological reasons of lower disease rates. In my admittedly beyond-most-people’s-pale opinion, women who work in settings where it could be feasible should be able to bring their babies with them so they could nurse directly. (Of course, the best thing is if they’re home with them full time, but life does get in the way sometimes.)

  • http://www.libertytreehugger.com reverelth

    To wonder whether lactating mothers working in tight quarters at McDonalds would involuntarily express when bumping into co workers!

  • ciscoguy

    What will they think of next – regulating air? Oops….

  • Christine (Trelaina)

    for a total of two years (two kids). I also manage an online support group for breastfeeding mothers. I am a die-hard supporter of breastfeeding….but I do NOT support this law.

    I agree that pumping in a bathroom isn’t the best solution – although I’ve done it when it was necessary. BUT, as stated, any company with the ability to set aside a room and warranted circumstances (ie a nursing mother) has already done this. There are also numerous laws at the state level that say the same thing. A federal law wasn’t needed.

    With my first child I pumped in an empty manager’s office. I had a nice little sign that said DO NOT DISTURB. With my second I used a combination of empty offices and a mother’s room. I managed my time appropriately and people barely knew what was going on. That is called RESPONSIBILITY.

    If you can’t get a mother’s room from your company but can negotiate the time away to pump, you can, without much effort, pump in YOUR CAR (in the parking lot of course). I know tons of moms who do it….I know some who prefer it to pumping in the office.

    There are plenty of ways to promote breastfeeding and pumping for working moms without resorting to federal law.

  • mom2oneson

    We should not blow off the problems lactating women have with work. There are places where women do not get their breaks, do not have a manager to give up their office and the manager may be a jerk or just uneducated about lactation. They might be unskilled and afraid demand a place out of fear of being fired and replaced. Lactating women generally need breaks to pump to maintain a breastfeeding relationship and their own health. You would think all employers would have this voluntarily have a place to pump and give breaks to reduce time off because babies that drink formula have illness at higher rates than those drinking human milk.

    I don’t see pumping in their car as standard alternative because it assumes the women has a car and does not rely on walking or public transportation. Some places require a shuttle back and forth the parking lot. That would take up the full break.The suggestion that women should pump in a stall is absoluely outrageous.

    Why can’t we ever acknowledge the problem the democrats are trying to solve even though we disagree with this law. This is a problem especially for women that are not working in an office setting. Unfortunately our society is very hostile towards breastfeeding. If more work places had a place to pump it would help mothers maintain lactation after resuming employment.

    • Christine (Trelaina)

      but I don’t see how a federal law is the answer, any more than it’s the answer for any other group toward which society is hostile.

      On my support group we’ve counseled LOTS of women who figured they couldn’t pump at work without even checking into it, because of their work schedule & environment, management, etc. We give them the facts to arm themselves with…better health for babies means less time out of work for moms, etc….and we encourage them to sit down, EARLY, with their managers and Human Resource departments. Bring a willingness to negotiate, we say…bring the facts, and you’ll find often you get good results. Escalate if you need to. Heck, we’ve suggested to more than one person that they just look for a different job (obviously, that’s not always a good idea, especially these days).

      We’ve had teachers who have little more than a smoke break all day who were able to arrange to pump in their supply closets. We’ve had women who deliver mail find a way to successfully pump. It can happen if you take RESPONSIBILITY, offer to be FLEXIBLE and make SACRIFICES.

      If more women approached the situation this way, we’d find the hostility slowly fade away. As companies work with their employees, they gain bragging rights when they need to hire, and that spreads to other companies. Why does the government need to be involved?

    • abbynormal

      In the 23 years I was enlisted in the Navy, (I retired 9 years ago) I nursed each of my 3 children for 12-14 months. Obviously, I was lucky enough not to be stationed on board a ship during that time, but while some may think the military would be one of the most hostile places for a nursing mother, I never found that to be the case.

      While still pregnant, I’d tell my immediate chain of command of my intention to and reasons for nursing, that I would need to pump milk while at work, where I would do it, and how it wouldn’t be any more intrusive than my co-workers’ smoke breaks. When I returned to work, and demonstrated it would not interfere with my job, most were very accepting, if not supportive. Sure, there were the jokes from the immature, but you consider the source, and ignore them.

      Bathrooms are the worst place, by far; who would choose to prepare their food in a bathroom? I’ve sat in utility closets too, not much cleaner, but quieter, and sometimes comfortably accomodated behind cypher locked doors. During one tour of duty, we were not allowed to leave our space for the amount of time it would take me to pump, so I curtained off a corner and the 2 male officers, with whom I worked, politely ignored the whirring sounds that echoed throughout our little space.

      I never expected to be challenged for my choice to breast feed my children, and I never was. I never forced my choice on my supervisors or my co-workers, but openly discussed the process, and made sure it never kept me from doing my job. I always hoped my positive and purposeful attitude would encourage my mostly male counterparts to support their wives if they chose to nurse, and to be more accepting of nursing mothers both on the job and in public.

  • http://www.scragged.com petrarch

    but WTH does this have to do with interstate commerce?

    Eventually, of course, we will return to the traditional answer: women of childbearing age stay at home and take care of the kids, because it’s simply too much of a pain in the neck to comply with all the regulations/restrictions/inconvenience necessary to have them working. Mad Men, here we come! I wonder if that was what the Dems intended when they wrote this?

  • http://phxg.wordpress.com/ phxg

    I suspect this is one of those things that will go from a simple “room” to a full blown, ADA approved facility including running water, refrigeration and of course paid pumping time.

    And where in the building will it be located? Pregnant women can’t be expected to walk a half mile to the place where the installed unit is, so will each work area be required to have one; just in case?

    I know the devil is in the details, but right now there are bureaucrats writing those rules and policies (you know the additional 20K pages) who have even less awareness of what a business must do to comply with their rules.

  • http://www.libertytreehugger.com reverelth

    At her place of employment?

    What kind of country would let employers off the hook for the responsibility for that?

  • blogan2

    You pump after you have the baby. I just can’t see how every business is going to be able to comply. I’m guessing my local McDonald’s has more than 50 employees, and I don’t know if they even have a breakroom in the back. I usually see employees taking their breaks in the public seating area.

    I wonder about employers that don’t even have a building, like landscaping, etc.

  • http://www.dirkworld.com dirkbelig

    I had to set up the computer workstations for what I called my building’s “Milking Lounge” several years ago. I work at a company that had about 300,000 employees globally and my site had in the neighborhood of 1800 people. It was a company that could afford to set up a room for mothers.

    They converted an area in the ground level down an area which also housed computer hardware storage, the server room, a call center and a TV studio. The lounge had a decent sized “lobby” area immediately in from the hallway that had a specially coded key card reader and that led into a pair of well-appointed offices for the women to do their milking. (I’m sorry, but “expressing” just sounds silly.)

    In the offices were a laptop docking station with external keyboard and monitor, a telephone, nice high-backed executive chair, the works. It was better than some of the middle management execs had.

    After setting this area up, it occurred to me, “How the heck is anyone supposed to get some work done if they’re busy milking themselves?” To use the docking station would require a laptop and those were a small percentage of the workforce. More importantly, if it takes one hand to hold the machinery and one hand is on the udd….er….breast, then HOW THE HECK IS ANYONE SUPPOSED TO DO ANYTHING WITH A COMPUTER?!?!?

    I went to my boss, explained the paradox and asked, “Who is supposed to be able to milk themselves AND work in a computer? Vishnu? Wasn’t he a guy?”

    In all the years I would pass by there, I don’t recall ever seeing anyone using the Milking Lounge. In fact, I wonder how many nursing mothers even knew about it and if they did just decided to go to the close-by floor bathrooms as opposed to trekking downstairs (10-story building) to sit in the superfluous milking zone?

  • Michael Dugas

    They’d jump at the chance to have pregnancy listed as disability.
    Any chance to justify their voting for and promoting murder.
    A salve for what little conscious they have left.

    I find it hard to believe that the costs incurred to meet these requirements can logically be justified by the actual “need” .

  • Common_Cents
  • NeoKong

    Why are infants at the work place….?

  • http://charlemagne-the-hammer.blogspot.com/ DerKrieger

    that this is none of the federal government’s business but the feds are late to the party. Almost every company I’ve ever worked for has had a nursing or family room for this kind of thing.

  • http://www.libertytreehugger.com reverelth

    made me wonder whether female Mardi Gras revelers (who were already in the buff from the waste up) would demand a private place to pump or nurse.

  • http://phxg.wordpress.com/ phxg
  • MrMosis

    soon to be 49 employees

  • Uma Richie

    According to liberals, women are sex objects. They need to hide the lactating women away; otherwise, squeamish metrosexuals will have to confront the truth that breasts serve a purpose beyond decoration and recreation.

  • wilfranc

    What about the time off required to express milk? Would it be break times (which in my state were not legally required by the employer unless a minor), or do they have to provide that too?

    If I were an employer, I’d think twice about hiring a woman of reproductive age if there were an older woman or man of any age out there with equal skills. A friend of mine whose son is handicapped thinks the ADA actually makes employment more difficult for him.

  • acat

    bottling. No infants need be at the work site. Relax, guys.

    This won’t be a serious hardship for most office-oriented businesses – and to use “The Office” as an example, all it’d take is either moving one of the guys with an actual office back onto the floor, or .. even easier .. allowing Pam to schedule the conference room all to herself.

    Restaurants are doomed – there don’t tend to be break rooms, and the storage is often in an attic or basement that’s not really suitable. Guess they’ll be cutting jobs to get employee count down below 50. (that’ll help those employment numbers!)

    Mew

  • acat

    is to expand “rights”.

    The more “rights” the people have, the more easily they can be led to vote for Dems who promise to “defend” their “rights”.

    This is not a new strategery, but it is a successful one.

    Again, for any business with an office, this should not be a real hardship – just allow Pam to schedule time in the conference room all by herself with the shades drawn. Restaurants are in trouble on this one, as are businesses where the employees spend a lot of time in the field. (pizza delivery drivers, for example)

    Requiring the “magic pumping room” is the tactic, the strategy is giving out “rights”. … and long-term this is going to take a lot of balls on the Repub side to get rid of. Expect the argument to go something like “Whaddya mean you want to take away a woman’s right to pump? You must want her barefoot and pregnant and in the kitchen, too!”

    Mew

  • http://www.suvstrategery.blogspot.com SoFiMil

    n/t

  • 6eorge Jetson

    of this rule.

    Pumping rooms mandated for pregnant women–I never would have seen that one coming by myself—but now it seems obvious. :)

  • http://www.suvstrategery.blogspot.com SoFiMil

    and the loss of several jobs.

    …Priceless

  • http://www.suvstrategery.blogspot.com SoFiMil

    to lower the minimum # of employees to 25?

  • cabanon

    It just says a place shielded from view, could be a cubicle with a room divider, maybe just schedule time in a conference room, its not that big of a deal.

  • trutexan

    See, that’s only one of the problems with this. At my work place, there is a separate room, within the restroom walls, just for nursing moms. It has a couch, tables, soft lighting, a privacy sign for the door handle, etc. But according to the wording of this legislation, now that really nice set up isn’t going to work. My government building has 3,000 people in it and there are several of these rooms set up around the campus. The government doesn’t provide the budget to adequately provide upkeep for the existing facilities let alone create new spaces.

    In the private sector, I think that what this will do is discourage employers from having any child-bearing age employees on staff just in case she gets pregnant. If all you have are seniors and men, then no problem. I can’t believe the NOW gang approves this. It’s a blatant way to eventually shut out the private sector who will be regulated to death. Any employer who now favors hiring women (restaurants, grocery/convenience stores, Old Navy, Macy’s, etc) may now think otherwise before hiring. It would be very easy to simply overlook those applications when it comes time to hire. All you have to do is have a couple of women over the age of 45-50 on staff and you will be able to defend any lawsuit. Just how many child-bearing age women will actually find work now? What does this do to the employment prospects of young single moms? Oh right, it keeps them on the government dole.

    First the tax on tampons and breastmilk pumping equipment, and now this. Tell me again how this helps? Washington is so stupid.

  • http://phxg.wordpress.com/ phxg

    I don’t recall anything for a period of 2 years starting at 1millisecond after the pregnancy test sounded off with:

    DING, DING, DING, You’re a WINNER!!!!

    But technically, yes, one could be pregnant AND still pumping. A double whammy which a new billion dollar expenditure will begin to educate those poor, poor misguided folks that they “Could have just had an abortion, it is included in the Obamacare” media blitz.

  • http://phxg.wordpress.com/ phxg

    I find it hard to believe that the costs incurred to meet these requirements can logically be justified by the actual

  • elon

    Couldn’ta said it better.

  • Christine (Trelaina)

    with two children…

    it’s very possible to handle a laptop/computer, to some degree, while pumping. If you have a “hands-free” kit (I won’t go into details :D ) you can do just about anything on the computer.

    Conference calls are difficult…only because pumps by their nature make very obvious noises… :)

  • mom2oneson

    I don’t see this is part of the sex object agenda. I see this as them making a federal law trying to solve a real problem women that employed women face, especially those working outside of an office setting. It is a problem for women and unfortunately not having a place to pump may end their nursing.
    I’ve seen the wanting to hide away nursing women away from conservatives and liberals. It seems more of a gender thing more than political or moral values, it is usually women that have the problem with a nursing mom!

  • Christine (Trelaina)

    ” it is usually women that have the problem with a nursing mom!”

    So true!

  • texasgalt

    Some problems require a choice on the part of the person facing the problem.

  • Michael Dugas

    So I do understand. But theirs a difference between what’s actually needed and what some bean counters decide we HAVE to have.