this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2024
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That Bethesda Union looking even better now.

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[–] grue 83 points 3 months ago (2 children)

That employee needs to get over her simping mentality and sue for the gender discrimination Bungie is blatantly guilty of. I don't give a shit if they happened to be doing a mass layoff at the same time; you don't get rid of somebody right before their already-scheduled maternity leave!

[–] [email protected] 38 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I'm not sure you have a case if the percentage of women on maternity leave in the fired group is roughly the same as in the non-fired group.

If it isn't illegal to fire people taking maternity leave specifically, which I don't think it is in the US, you're out of luck. The only illegal thing is firing people because of maternity leave. Since there was a mass layoff, it can easily be argued that the maternity leave was not the reason.

The US needs better labor laws, and thus unions. An individual can't do anything against it.

[–] grue 27 points 3 months ago (2 children)

There are two possibilities. Either:

  1. The decision to lay the person off was made before the maternity leave was scheduled, in which case I'd argue she has a case for detrimental reliance, or

  2. The decision to lay the person off was made after the maternity leave was scheduled, in which case a prima facie assumption is fair to make that the taking of leave obviously colored the supervisor's evaluation and contributed to the layoff, and the burden is on the employer to prove otherwise.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago

Or option 3: manager made sure not to discriminate against non-maternity-leave people by not overly firing them compared to people on maternity leave.

If they only fired people not on maternity leave, they could sue about being discriminated against.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

Speaking to a lawyer? That'll be $400 an hour.

[–] chiliedogg 2 points 3 months ago

In fact, there's an argument to be made that they must terminate her, because Terminating everybody but those with scheduled maternity leave has a disparate impact on employees who are not pregnant.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Seriously? It happened to someone I used to work with (last November). Except they laid her off while she was on maternity leave.

[–] Huschke 14 points 3 months ago (1 children)

My wife was at home for 3 months before the birth of our child and 2 years afterward. I always considered that not enough.

I can't imagine living in a country where you could be laid off before or even worse during your maternity leave.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago

honestly it is also hard for me to imagine living in the country i live in

[–] grue 14 points 3 months ago

Your former coworker should sue, too.