Resolution: 71A-09-08
Approved: June 23, 2009
In May of 2009, the Supreme Court in AT&T Corp. v. Hulteen sided against female workers who get smaller pensions than their male colleagues because they took maternity leave before Congress passed the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978. The 1978 law clarified that, under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, pregnancy discrimination counted as sex discrimination; therefore, employers must accord pregnancy disability with the same treatment as other disabilities.
The Supreme Court’s most recent decision involved four employees of AT&T who took maternity leaves between 1968 and 1976 – before the law required employers to offer pregnancy leave on equal terms with other disability conditions. The women were denied full credit for those leaves resulting in reduced pension payments.
The decision in Hulteen negatively impacts an estimated 15,000 women who worked at AT&T and took maternity leave before the law was changed. It potentially also affects thousands of other women who worked at other companies that had discriminatory pregnancy leave policies in the years before passage of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978.
The Court majority decided that AT&T’s continued shortchanging of the four women in this case and the thousands of others it harmed in the past is permissible based on the fact that their pregnancy leaves predated the 1978 law.
AT&T’s denial of equal benefits should not be dismissed as past discriminatory behavior, but rather as an on-going act of discrimination that results in reduced pension benefits for the women involved. In effect, this is a denial of equal pay for women. They deserve to be made whole. AT&T cannot be trusted to do the right thing for its employees, as the company has shown time and again.
Resolved: The Communication Workers of America shall explore remedies, including possible legislative action, to supersede the Supreme Court decision in AT&T Corp. v. Hulteen in order to provide redress for the thousands of women workers harmed due to prior pregnancy disability discrimination.
Resolved: The Communications Workers of America shall educate our members on the implications of this damaging ruling and potential solutions.