A large body of evidence suggests that paid family leave policies have substantial positive effects on both parents and children, particularly for families earning low wages. A national paid family leave policy would bring the United States closer in line with other developed nations. But Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Natalie Kitroeff of the New York Times points out that workplace inequities begin even before a woman gives birth, and that pregnancy in America can be particularly hard on those working physically strenuous jobs:

Pregnancy discrimination is widespread in corporate America. Some employers deny expecting mothers promotions or pay raises; others fire them before they can take maternity leave. But for women who work in physically demanding jobs, pregnancy discrimination often can come with even higher stakes. The New York Times reviewed thousands of pages of court and other public records involving workers who said they had suffered miscarriages, gone into premature labor or, in one case, had a stillborn baby after their employers rejected their pleas for assistance — a break from flipping heavy mattresses, lugging large boxes and pushing loaded carts.

Pregnant women currently have few, if any, protections under federal law.

Under federal law, companies don’t necessarily have to adjust pregnant women’s jobs, even when lighter work is available and their doctors send letters urging a reprieve. The Pregnancy Discrimination Act is the only federal law aimed at protecting expecting mothers at work. It is four paragraphs long and 40 years old. It says that a company has to accommodate pregnant workers’ requests only if it is already doing so for other employees who are “similar in their ability or inability to work.” That means that companies that do not give anyone a break have no obligation to do so for pregnant women. If companies “treat their nonpregnant employees terribly, they have every right to treat their pregnant employees terribly as well,” said Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York, who has pushed for stronger federal protections for expecting mothers. In every congressional session since 2012, a group of lawmakers has introduced a bill that would do for pregnant women what the Americans With Disabilities Act does for disabled people: require employers to accommodate those whose health depends on it. The legislation has never had a hearing.

Arguments for SNAP work requirements don’t hold water
With Election Day just two weeks away, House Republicans are escalating their efforts to institute work requirement policies that would take away federal food benefits from hungry families. But, as the Atlantic’s Olivia Paschal argues, the arguments on behalf of work requirements misconstrue recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as Food Stamps) and misrepresent how the program works to support working families:

(Vice President Mike) Pence’s support for “dignity in work” belies the reality of the work requirements: According to a new study from the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project, most SNAP recipients either are already working or physically can’t. The share of people who aren’t already subject to work requirements within the program, who aren’t currently working, or who have no interest in working? “Less than 1 percent,” said Lauren Bauer, a Hamilton Project fellow and one of the study’s authors.

While the work requirements included in the House version of the Farm Bill wouldn’t connect many new workers to the labor force, they would pull benefits from a significant number of families and individuals in need.

Indeed, the study found that two-thirds of the people who would be “newly exposed” to work requirements under the bill are already in the labor force. “This notion that we need to get people back into the workforce and back enjoying the dignity of work—two-thirds are working,” Bauer told me. “They’re working at low-wage jobs with volatile hours, and they’re not earning enough to earn their way out of the program. But two-thirds are working.” She said a large share of those who are consistently out of the labor market report that they have serious health problems preventing them from working, even when they’re not on disability. And her research suggests they’re telling the truth. “They’re not lying,” she said. “People who say they’re not well are really not well.” The House bill’s strict reporting standards, which include verification of employment or a doctor’s note explaining why someone isn’t employed, could result in collateral damage: People who are working, or are too sick to work, could lose benefits if they don’t meet what Bauer calls the “paperwork burden.”

The House bill’s work requirements are poised to hit rural communities the hardest, while having limited or negative long term impacts on the career prospects for workers subject to the measure.

Louisiana can’t wait for someone else to act on climate
Recent and ongoing weather events, including rapidly intensifying and extraordinarily powerful tropical cyclones, have been a stark reminder of the threats that global climate change pose to our low-lying coastal state. Scarier still is the possibility that our politics will stop us from taking the steps necessary to avert the worst consequences of an increase in average global temperature. The time for those measures to be effective, however, is running very short, and we can’t rely on personal experiences of severe weather to convince our nation’s leaders to take serious action. The Advocate’s Stephanie Grace explains how crucial it is that our state’s leaders recognize and act upon the reality of this threat:

Just as scary for Louisianans and for everyone else is a dire new report from the United Nations projecting a worldwide catastrophe as soon as 2040 if current trends continue. Yet far too many American politicians, particularly on the Republican side and including representatives of places such as Louisiana that are most endangered, remain blasé about the whole matter. With control of the White House and both branches of Congress, Republicans are currently on a deregulation tear. For a more sensible business approach, I often think back to the words of Wayne Leonard, the former Entergy CEO who died earlier this year. Leonard was a passionate advocate for recognizing and addressing the reality of climate change, even if some questions remained unanswered. He used to describe it as a simple matter of risk management. As a state and as a country, we haven’t done nearly enough to manage that risk. It’s way past time to start.

McConnell cut taxes for the rich, now he’d like the poor to pay for it
The tax cuts that Congress passed in 2017 were a massive giveaway to the nation’s wealthiest households. Now, as many predicted, the bill for those cuts is coming due, and congressional Republicans are looking to the nation’s poorest families to cover the costs. Steve Wamhoff of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy reminds us that when Sen. Mitch McConnell expresses concern over the deficit, he’s talking about a deficit that his own policies created:

Blaming President Obama and the Democrats for not acting to address the budget deficit is an interesting approach for McConnell to take, given that budget-busting tax cuts were at least reigned in a bit under Obama. The graph below, from ITEP’s July report, illustrates how this happened by comparing the tax cuts enacted since 2000 in three different years: 2012, 2015 and 2018.

As the report explains, in 2012, nearly all the Bush tax cuts, which provided benefits to all income groups but were very tilted toward high-income households, were in effect. But in the same year, several provisions enacted by President Obama were also in effect (expansions of the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit and a payroll tax holiday), which helped low- and middle-income working people. By 2015, President Obama and Congress had allowed the payroll tax holiday and parts of the Bush tax cuts to expire, and tax increases on the rich that were enacted as part of the Affordable Care Act had gone into effect. This decreased the deficit (compared to the Republican proposals at the time of extending all the Bush tax cuts and repealing the ACA), but McConnell was uninterested in this deficit-reducing measure because debt is not his real concern. In 2017, he pushed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act through the Senate, which is projected to increase the national debt by $2 trillion over a decade.

Number of the Day:
7.9 – Percentage point gap between the proportion of jobs requiring a college degree and the proportion of the population age 25 years or older with a four-year college degree in the New Orleans region in 2016. That year, 29.4 percent of the New Orleans metro area population over 25 years of age held a four-year college degree, while only 21.6 percent of jobs in the area required a four-year degree. (Source: The Urban Institute)