This article from the International Herald Tribune discusses a new label for workplace discrimination that is showing up more and more in courts. It's called "Family Responsibilities Discrimination," or FDR. Labeled such by Mary Still, a faculty fellow at the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California Hastings College of Law in San Francisco. The center recently released a study which deals with a new category of discrimination suit being brought in the U.S.—and being won.
The plaintiffs are mostly parents and mostly women, but about 10 percent are men, and some are caring for spouses or parents, not children. All are claiming discrimination at work because they are giving care at home. Like so many evolving subsets in law, family responsibilities discrimination does not exist in any statute. Rather it is an argument being made often enough that it can now be counted and analyzed.
Interesting to watch this evolve.
A friend of mine works at company who generously gave paid days off to a man whose wife was diagnosed with stomach cancer and who needed to take extra time off to care for her. Sadly, some of his coworkers made a stink about it because THEY didn't get extra paid time off. Interestingly though, they didn't complain that THEY didn't get to have a spouse with stomach cancer.
In our society we are so focused on having it all that in many cases, as a result, we neglect the things in life that are truly important simply because our jobs demand more of us. I see this shift of putting more value on what's going on at home as positive one.
A friend of mine works at company who generously gave paid days off to a man whose wife was diagnosed with stomach cancer and who needed to take extra time off to care for her. Sadly, some of his coworkers made a stink about it because THEY didn't get extra paid time off. Interestingly though, they didn't complain that THEY didn't get to have a spouse with stomach cancer.
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