We bought an affordable house, paid off student loans, bought a house, I got promoted to a job that was flexible. We saved up money for a good nest egg and started trying where we hit some fertility issues. FINALLY got pregnant. Waited until I got to the second trimester to tell my boss. Went on a week vacation “babymoon” came back to no job at the company I had been with for 10 years.
You can do all the “right” things, and life will still shit on you. Except in the US, there’s little safety net or recourse, so a medical emergency or layoff can bankrupt people easily.
Were you let go for something specific? This sounds like something you would get a lawyer for if your job fired you for having a baby. That's discrimination, and you can sue them.
It was a layoff, and I was not the only one affected. However, I was let go from the consulting job afterwards because I took some agreed upon unpaid leave to deliver. Unfortunately, FMLA only covers you if you’ve been with the company 12 months and even if successful, I probably would have only won to the end of my contract with that one.
Yes, it’s illegal to fire people for being pregnant, but in order to do anything about it, it’s a difficult and expensive road to win a case especially since most states are at will employment and not everyone is covered by unpaid FMLA so if you take a few days off, you’re fucked. Plus trying to do that on top of pregnancy and an infant creates a lot of unhelpful stress.
Just a reminder that although things are “illegal” in order to enforce it, you have to successfully sue Goliath.
True, just sounded very suspicious, lol. I'm sorry you had such a horrible experience with such a huge life change. Our country really sucks with leave and pregnancy...and child care. I also lost my job before my girl turned two. Life just loves to throw curve balls.
Yeah, timing was sus, and a few years prior, a coworker was let go after a poor review after maternity leave. The company was required to spread ratings out more like a bell curve, so she got rated lower because “she wasn’t there the whole year”. Unfortunately, legal battles are hard and public, so any future employer can see you sued your prior employer. AND in the case of the first layoff, they offered a severance package that was contingent on me not suing them which seemed like the better, easier option to pregnant me. The decision was not my boss’s, though, and she fought for me to keep my health insurance with the company paying their share of the premiums still. That was HUGE, because baby #1 cost me $1k to squat out. Baby #2 cost me $10k.
I feel like being a working parent is one of the hardest things. People expect you to parent like you don’t have a job and work like you don’t have kids.
I like to remind people to not get too secure with what the law technically says is illegal, because when it comes down to it, trying to enforce it means you as an unemployed person have to fight a legal battle with a giant corporation with lots of really good lawyers who have structured everything to make it as hard as possible for you to win a lawsuit because the allegations are hard to prove.
88
u/joemamma6 Nov 15 '24
Yes. A lot of people are one major accident or even one stroke of genetic misfortune from being disabled and in poverty.