The 20th-century era of enacting labor laws in the United States was one of the world’s first initiatives to protect innate human rights in the workforce. For much of our country’s history, there had been little regulation of the workplace. It was not uncommon to see children and adults working 70-hour weeks in factories, far away from their home with only shanty and overcrowded sleeping arrangements available to them, with no mandated breaks or days off. Despite these conditions, many children and women flocked to these jobs to help support their families with no power to demand better conditions. In this pre-trust-bust society, large companies and their owners were some of the most powerful entities in a country seeing unemployment rates as high as double today according to Vernon1. Middle-class laborers flocked to these positions like bugs to bright light, careful to be quiet so they weren’t squished by a bigger, stronger human. This era of labor law reform saw the enforcement of workplace safety, mandating of the working-age, and various other statues that we see as fundamental today. All of these changes would lead way to the establishment of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) of 1993 that provided federal protections to qualifying individuals’ job security. This act is the reason why new parents can take several weeks off of work to care for their new babies or a cancer patient can take time off to receive treatment without being immediately fired.
Unintentional Benefit of FMLA
The immediate benefits of FMLA are obvious but there are further-reaching, institutional-level benefits of this act. Although it was likely an unintentional benefit, the formalization of mother and father’s rights to take leave from work after having a child has been one of the biggest advancements in gender equality from contemporary legislation. Historically, women were tasked with staying home to care for their children while men worked to support the household. Before FMLA, employers had the ability to fire new mothers for taking time off after childbirth that ultimately forced them to leave their jobs preemptively or return to work shortly after the physically demanding childbirth process. However, the new act mandated leave of absence for family and medical issues that elevated a woman’s ability to establish a career without sacrificing her family life.
If you’ve ever watched shows like Mad Men, the staunch difference in the unequal treatment of men and women in the 20th-century workplace is more than obvious. Although this may be exaggerated for the purpose of making a good show, there are a plethora of resources available describing the typical role of women serving in only assistant-level capacities. Whether it be a nurse or administrative assistant, women were always in low-level positions that made them easily replaceable as the cycle of hiring, working for a few years, and then quitting to have children went around and around. As with every job you have to work your way up the ladder that takes years and years. Hopping off the ladder midway for a break always results in you restarting from the bottom of the ladder the same can be said for leaving an entry-level job. By allowing leaves of absences, new mothers didn’t have to hop off the ladder instead, they could stop mid-climb to catch their breaths and continue their journey to a higher-level position. Termination of an employee for taking leave after childbirth is implicitly discriminatory towards women because it forces women to be stay-at-home mothers, not have a family at all, or forces them into the precarious position of not coming to term with the pregnancy through medical intervention. This is inherently unethical in various forms and contributed to the patriarchal workplace environment that is still ongoing today but has advanced magnitudes since FMLA.
FMLA produced a healthier environment
The ability to issue leave of absence violations to companies that terminate employees or refuse their leave for qualifying family or medical issues has changed the entire workforce dynamic. This has produced a healthier environment for people, allowing them to maintain strong personal lives outside of work, gave the worker power in a previously one-sided relationship, and most importantly diversified the once single-gender workplace. The protection of a woman’s right to exit the workplace safely to give birth has propelled the female fight for equality in the USA. In a world where money and status are power, maintaining a proper occupation is essential in making the institutional-level changes needed for driving the workplace away from male domination and incorporating the valuable ideas women uniquely bring to the table. Additionally, this has also helped destigmatize single parenting which would have been impossible prior to protections regarding leaves of absence – this single parenting has now been an essential component in protecting women without a present father figure, women with husbands who are currently serving country, or women who have recently lost their loved ones in the line of duty.
Law protects worker’s right for medical leave of absence
If our country were to never enact employment laws protecting one’s right for leave of absence, the workplace in our country would not be recognizable to what we have today. The office space would contain only young men and a constant rotation of women in their early 20s. There’d be few older men because of the growing implications of medical issues as we age and few women in power positions because of the hiring-pregnancy cycles outlined previously. Our workplaces would feel less safe because of the lack of equality amongst employees of different genders. The empowerment of individuals to take time off doesn’t just impact the person affected it benefits every individual in the workplace. It reassures every employee that the company and country care about their well being it reassures them that they’re valued as people and not just replaceable. It motivates them to do their best work and reminds them that their colleagues and administration are their friends and family too. Although FMLA was established to protect worker’s rights, it has done so much more by changing the entire social stratification of our country, dispersing economic opportunities to women, and creating a healthier place to work every day.
Author: Branden M. Bateman from the University of Delaware
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