Today, A Better Balance submitted an amicus (“friend of the court”) brief on behalf of ourselves and 11 additional gender justice and workers’ rights organizations defending the caregiver anti-discrimination provisions of the New York City Human Rights Law, a protection A Better Balance fought to enact.
Caonaissa Won, the plaintiff in this case, worked as an associate at an Amazon fulfillment center in Staten Island, New York. She is a single mother and sole caregiver for her son, who was seven years old at the time. Among the claims in her case, Ms. Won requested and was denied a small schedule adjustment of just 15 minutes so she could drop off and pick up her son from school. As alleged in the case, Amazon has a policy that provides similar schedule adjustments for other purposes, including for employees’ own education. However, Amazon does not extend this policy to caregivers who need schedule adjustments to fulfill their family responsibilities.
Policies like these, which disfavor caregivers’ needs, violate the New York City Human Rights Law’s prohibition on caregiver discrimination, which A Better Balance led the fight to pass in 2015. As our testimony in favor of the law made clear, one of the law’s primary purposes was to outlaw discriminatory policies like the one at issue here, which devalue caregiving responsibilities and unfairly disadvantage caregivers like Caonaissa Won.
Often, policies disfavoring caregivers are based on biased assumptions about the commitment of caregivers (and in particular, mothers) to their jobs. As a result, many caregivers actually get less flexibility than other employees receive and experience more retaliation when they ask for it.
In the coming years, even more U.S. workers will find themselves caring for a child, an adult family member, or both at the same time. Employers have the opportunity to support these employees by implementing fair policies, instead of forcing them to make impossible choices between work and family responsibilities. A Better Balance fought to make sure caregivers in New York City have a right to equal treatment, and we will continue to stand up for workers when these rights are violated.