For decades, employers have used non-competition agreements to not only artificially lower the salaries of their employees but also to render those employees into something akin to indentured servitude.
On January 5, 2023, the Federal Trade Commission proposed a new rule – accessible at https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/federal-register-notices/non-compete-clause-rulemaking — that would ban employers from imposing non-competes on their workers, a widespread and often exploitative practice that suppresses wages, hampers innovation, and blocks entrepreneurs from starting new businesses. The proposed rule provides that: “It is an unfair method of competition for an employer to enter into or attempt to enter into a non-compete clause with a worker; maintain with a worker a non-compete clause; or represent to a worker that the worker is subject to a non-compete clause where the employer has no good faith basis to believe that the worker is subject to an enforceable non-compete clause.” The proposed rule would also require the rescission of all non-competition agreements entered into before the date the new rule takes effect.
By stopping these unfair non-competition agreements, the FTC estimates not only that wages might be increased by nearly $300 billion per year but also that expanded career opportunities would abound for about 30 million Americans.
On December 7, 2022, President Joe Biden signed the Speak Out Act, which bans the use of pre-dispute non-disclosure and non-disparagement contract clauses involving sexual assault and sexual harassment. The new law renders unenforceable non-disclosure and non-disparagement clauses related to allegations of sexual assault and/or sexual harassment that are entered into “before the dispute arises.” The new law does not prohibit the use of these agreements completely. The Speak Out Act exclusively prohibits and nullifies pre-dispute non-disclosure and non-disparagement agreements and does not apply to post-dispute agreements. Accordingly, the act only applies to instances before a sexual harassment, or sexual assault dispute arises. The act also does not apply to trade secrets, proprietary information, or other types of employee complaints such as wage theft, age discrimination, or race discrimination.
AURORA, IL – While workers at a local supermarket stocked shelves, operated cash registers, and served customers Mexican hot foods and baked goods, their Aurora employer was denying them their hard-earned overtime pay for two years, the U.S. Department of Labor recently found.
After its investigation, the department’s Wage and Hour Division has recovered a total of $399,851 in back wages and liquidated damages for 49 workers at Supermercado Carrera, a family-owned supermarket.
Division investigators determined the supermarket’s operator paid several employees straight-time wages for overtime and shortchanged them of the legally required time and one-half premium for hours over 40 in a workweek. The employer also incorrectly classified some employees as exempt from overtime. These actions violated the Fair Labor Standards Act.
In addition to $199,925 in back wages and an equal amount in liquidated damages, Supermercado Carrera also paid $734 in civil money penalties the division assessed after investigators found that a minor-aged employee worked beyond permitted hours.
The nearly $400,000 in back wages and damages our investigation recovered will make a significant difference in the lives of 49 workers and their families,” said Wage and Hour Division District Director Tom Gauza in Chicago. “Typically, small grocers employ low-wage and vulnerable workers likely unaware of their basic rights to the federal minimum wage and overtime pay. Workers in the U.S. have the right to be paid their full earned wages.
In the fiscal year 2022, the Wage and Hour Division’s office in Chicago recovered $6.4 million in back wages and $647,000 in liquidated damages for more than 6,400 workers. Most commonly, the division found violations of overtime and minimum wage. In the first four months of the fiscal year 2023, the office has recovered $1.6 million in back wages and $814,000 in liquidated damages for 1,182 workers.
“We continue to work with local worker’s advocacy groups, consulates, and other community resources to educate workers about their rights. Failing to pay accurate wages is an issue across a myriad of industries,” Gauza added. “Employers or workers with questions should reach out to Wage and Hour for information.”
New Hampshire chimney services contractor pays $26K to settle allegations of retaliation and interference with a federal investigation of pay practices.
Federal law prohibits employers from punishing workers who exercise their legal rights.
MANCHESTER, NH – A Manchester chimney services contractor has paid a total of $26,163 to three workers to resolve allegations that the employer violated the Fair Labor Standards Act’s anti-retaliation provisions enforced by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division.
The U.S. Department of Labor takes allegations of employee retaliation very seriously. Federal law protects workers’ ability to exercise their rights freely without fear of reprisals,” explained Wage and Hour Division District Director Steven McKinney in Manchester, New Hampshire. “These rights include the ability to contact the department and other agencies about the employer’s pay practices and to speak openly with investigators and other department officials during an investigation.
Division investigators found Ceaser Chimney Service Inc. fired an employee in June 2021 after they contacted the New Hampshire Department of Labor to inquire about their rights under the labor laws. During its investigation, the employer also unlawfully questioned two other employees regarding their communications with the Wage and Hour Division. Anti-retaliation provisions in the Fair Labor Standards Act prohibit employers from discharging an employee or discriminating against an employee who engages in protected activity, including filing a complaint, participating in an investigation, or even simply asking questions about their wages.
Per the settlement agreement, Ceaser Chimney Inc. has done the following:
Paid the terminated employee a total of $21,163, which includes $2,463 in back pay for the time they were unemployed after the termination, $8,700 in front pay, and $10,000 in punitive damages.
Paid the other employees punitive damages totaling $5,000, or $2,500 each.
Agreed not to discharge or in any other manner discriminate against any employee because they filed a complaint, testified, or participated in any Fair Labor Standards Act investigation or proceeding or has asserted any right guaranteed by the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Agreed to provide all current and future employees with a written statement of their Fair Labor Standards Act rights for a five-year period.
The division will continue to enforce these protections vigorously and make it clear – as Ceaser Chimney Inc. has learned – that retaliation against workers has costly consequences. The Wage and Hour Division encourages workers and employers in northern New England to contact the Manchester District Office to learn more about their respective rights and responsibilities under federal law,” added McKinney.
The FLSA requires that most employees in the U.S. be paid at least the federal minimum wage for all hours worked and overtime pay at not less than time and one-half the regular rate of pay for all hours worked over 40 in a workweek.
Learn more about the Wage and Hour Division, including a search tool if you think you may be owed back wages collected by the division. Employers and workers can call the division confidentially with questions regardless of their immigration status. The department can speak with callers confidentially in more than 200 languages through the agency’s toll-free helpline at 866-4US-WAGE (487-9243).
Burger King Franchise to Pay $60,000 to Settle EEOC Sexual Harassment and Retaliation Suit
Employer Allowed Abuse of Pregnant Employee and Fired Her After She Complained, Federal Agency Charged
ASHEVILLE, N.C. – North Georgia Foods, Inc., a Georgia-based company operating several Burger King restaurants, including one in Murphy, North Carolina, has agreed to pay $60,000 and provide other relief to settle a sex harassment, retaliation, and pregnancy discrimination lawsuit brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the agency announced today.
According to the EEOC’s complaint, from at least August 2018 through approximately July 2019, a team member at North Georgia Foods’ Murphy, North Carolina location was sexually harassed by a male assistant manager. The harassment included vulgar sexual comments, threatening behavior, and unwelcome sexual touching. The team member complained multiple times and asked not to work alone with the male assistant manager. North Georgia Foods did not take action to stop the harassment but instead removed the team member from the schedule completely in June 2019. The company refused to communicate with the team member and later refused to reinstate her employment. The EEOC also alleged the team member was discriminated against because of her pregnancy.
This alleged conduct violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII), which protects employees from sex-based harassment in the workplace. The EEOC filed suit (EEOC v. North Georgia Foods, Inc, d/b/a Burger King, Case No. 1:22-cv-00049) in the United States District Court for the Western District of North Carolina after first attempting to reach a pre-litigation settlement via its voluntary conciliation process.
The outcome of this case demonstrates that employers who ignore complaints of sex-based harassment in the workplace or retaliate against employees for asserting their rights under Title VII will be held accountable.
The suit was resolved by a two-year consent decree that prohibits North Georgia Foods from discriminating and retaliating against employees in violation of Title VII. North Georgia Foods must also prominently post a telephone number for an off-site reporting official, revise its written anti-discrimination policies, and train employees on the process for reporting complaints of discrimination and the requirements of Title VII, including its anti-retaliation provisions.
“The outcome of this case demonstrates that employers who ignore complaints of sex-based harassment in the workplace or retaliate against employees for asserting their rights under Title VII will be held accountable,” said EEOC Regional Attorney Melinda C. Dugas.
The EEOC advances opportunity in the workplace by enforcing federal laws prohibiting employment discrimination. The EEOC’s Charlotte District is charged with enforcing federal employment discrimination laws in North Carolina, Virginia, and South Carolina.
A South Carolina restauranteur was sentenced to prison after admitting he used violence, threats, and intimidation to force a black man to work more than 100 hours a week with no pay in a stunning case of throwback slavery.
On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge R. Bryan Harwell sentenced 54-year-old Bobby Paul Edwards to 10 years in federal prison after he pleaded guilty to one count of forced labor, according to a press release from the Department of Justice. Prosecutors say that Edwards, who managed his family’s restaurant, forced Chris Smith, an intellectually disabled black man, to work for free and live in a small room behind the restaurant. Court documents show that Edwards physically abused Smith for at least 17 years, including whipping Smith with a belt, beating him with pots and pans, and even burning him with hot grease.
In 1996, when Smith was only 12 years old, he accepted a job at J&J Cafeteria in Conway, S.C., WPDE reports. Six years later, Edwards took over as manager and stopped paying Smith. Over the next 17 years, Edwards would torture, imprison and withhold pay from Smith, claiming that his pay was kept in an “account” that was inaccessible to Smith.
A federal lawsuit filed on Smith’s behalf claims that Smith worked 18 hours a day, six days a week. On Sundays, he only had to work 11 hours. During his entire 23 years of enslavement at J&J, Smith claims he never had a work break or a day off. Forced to live in a “cockroach-infested” apartment behind the business, Smith alleges that Edwards’ family never tried to intervene.
“They knew,” said Smith. “All of ‘em knew. They knew what he was doing.”
For stealing his victim’s freedom and wages, Mr. Edwards has earned every day of his sentence.
When Smith’s family would try to check on him, Edwards would lock Smith in the kitchen or even in the freezer. On the rare occasion that Smith indicated displeasure or tried to escape, he was hit in the head with a frying pan, burned with hot tongs, beaten with belt buckles, and called the n-word repeatedly. Customers reported that they sometimes heard Smith being beaten and screaming for his life.
“I wanted to get out of there a long time ago. But I didn’t have nobody I could go to,” Smith explained. “I couldn’t go anywhere. I couldn’t see none of my family so that was that…That’s the main basic thing I wanted to see was my mom [to] come see me.”
Geneane Caines, who was friends with the Edwards family, was a frequent customer at J&J, and her daughter, who worked at the eatery, told her how Edwards abused Smith. Once, while eating at the restaurant, she noticed signs of abuse.
He leaned one way over and when he did, I could see [a scar] on his neck.
After looking into the situation, Caines reported Edwards to the Department of Social Services, who rescued Smith. Caines also alerted Abdullah Mustafa, President of the Conway chapter of the NAACP. They helped Smith get on his feet and Caines allowed Smith to stay in her home for two months.
Edwards was sentenced to 10 years after pleading guilty to one count of forced labor. He was also ordered to pay $272,952.96 in restitution. (Or as Merriam-Webster correctly defines it: “Reparations.”)
“For stealing his victim’s freedom and wages, Mr. Edwards has earned every day of his sentence,” said U.S. Attorney Sherri A. Lydon for the District of South Carolina. “The U.S. Attorney’s Office will not tolerate forced or exploitative labor in South Carolina, and we are grateful to the watchful citizen and our partners in law enforcement who put a stop to this particularly cruel violence.”
The next day, Lydon, an ever-vigilant protector of the people, prosecuted 28-year-old Erron Jordan. Jordan was stopped by a Conway police officer because his window tint was too dark. After cops noticed the “odor of marijuana,” police found a small amount of illegal drugs, prescription pills, and a firearm in the car.
Jordan was sentenced to 12 years in prison and three years of supervised probation.
Jordan has never been convicted of a violent offense.
Oh, “Justice” Department, you almost had me.
If you or your loved ones would like to dine at J&J Cafeteria, it is open 14 hours a day, seven days a week.
February 28, 2022 – As the Senate prepares to hold hearings on the historic nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman nominated to sit on the Supreme Court, it’s the perfect time to highlight a new biography about another Black woman who accomplished a series of firsts and who, in another, more modern, era, would almost certainly have been nominated to serve on the Supreme Court – Constance Baker Motley.
Constance Baker Motley was not only the first Black woman to argue before the Supreme Court (winning an astonishing nine of 10 cases), but she was also the first black woman to be appointed to the federal judiciary – President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed her to the Southern District of New York.
Motley began college at Fisk University, a historically black college in Nashville, Tennessee, but subsequently transferred to New York University, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree. She received her Bachelor of Laws from Columbia Law School. Motley then went to work for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. as a civil rights lawyer, where she wrote the original complaint in the case of Brown v. Board of Education. Her first argument before the Supreme Court was in Meredith v. Fair; she won James Meredith’s effort to be the first black student to attend the University of Mississippi.
In her terrific new book on Motley’s life and legacy – called “Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality“- Harvard law professor Tomiko Brown-Nagin Poignantly describes Motley’s life from the time that she was born to a working-class family during the Great Depression, to her role as one of the principal strategists of the Civil Rights Movement and for her legal defense of Martin Luther King Jr., the Freedom Riders, and the Birmingham Children Marchers when she was a civil rights lawyer for the NAACP, to her service in the New York State Senate and as Manhattan Borough President, to her becoming the first Black woman serving in the federal judiciary.
February 25, 2022 – On January 26, 2022, Justice Stephen Gerald Breyer notified the White House that he would retire at the end of the 2021-2022 term. One month later, on February 25, 2022, President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. nominated Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, beginning a historic confirmation process for the first Black woman to sit on the highest court in the nation in its 223-year history.
Judge Jackson, who clerked for Justice Breyer, has worked as a public defender, a corporate attorney, a U.S. District Court judge, is currently sitting on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. “If I’m fortunate enough to be confirmed as the next associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States,” Judge Jackson commented in her prepared remarks about her nomination, “I can only hope that my life and career, my love of this country and the Constitution and my commitment to upholding the rule of law and the sacred principles upon which this great nation was founded, will inspire future generations of Americans.”
If confirmed, Justice Jackson won’t alter the Supreme Court’s ideological far-right conservative tilt because the overall makeup of the court will continue to include six conservatives and three liberals. Unfortunately, despite winning the popular vote in 7 of the last 8 elections, the Republicans have rigged the system to achieve a radical conservative majority. Indeed, when Justice Antonin Gregory Scalia died in February of an election year (2016), President Barack Hussein Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland would have, if confirmed by the Senate, flipped the then five-to-four conservative court to a five-to-four liberal one. But Senator Mitch McConnel and his Republican caucus refused to hold a hearing on Garland’s nomination on the theory that court vacancies that arise during presidential election years should remain unfilled until the next president takes office. Then, when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in an election year (September 2020, less than two months before the presidential election), Senator Mitch McConnel and his Republican cronies hypocritically changed the rules and confirmed President Donald John Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett with lightning speed. “And just like that,” as Carrie Bradshaw would say, what should have been a 6 – 3 liberal court majority became the most radical right-wing conservative court since the Lochner era of 1897 to 1937.
Like many people during the early months of the pandemic, Ari, 21, lost her job in the summer of 2020. She’d been working at a casino in the U.K., but government shutdowns forced her employer to lay her off. “I had to get money somehow,” she says.
Ari, whose full name has been withheld to protect her privacy, had an account on OnlyFans, a direct-to-consumer content platform popularized by online sex workers that exploded in popularity during the pandemic. But she’d never really worked to promote her account, until after she was laid off. She’d started to grow a minor following, raking in about $3,000 per month. Then another creator on OnlyFans, a woman we’ll call Cora, messaged her. She’d just gotten a new manager, Nathan Johnson, who’d promised her she could one day earn nearly $100,000 per month; he’d just lost a model, and he needed a new one to take over her Instagram account.
Ari was intrigued. She was somewhat familiar with Johnson, a 21-year-old social media advertising wunderkind of sorts who on his website touts press coverage from the New York Times (in which he was quoted in a piece on spammy Instagram cash giveaway accounts), Business Insider, and Yahoo Finance. Johnson owned a model management company, NJAC LLC, and he was recruiting Ari via his Instagram account Enhancement, which has more than half a million followers on Instagram; in its bio, Enhancement promises to help earn creators $100,00 per month. Ari says Johnson also claimed to be partnered with Baddie, a popular Instagram page promoting OnlyFans creators. (When reached by Rolling Stone, Johnson declined to comment whether NJAC has any relationship with Baddie, though he said the two management companies shared employees at the time.)
Ari thought there were a few red flags — Johnson’s company didn’t have its own website, and she didn’t speak with him on the phone. But Cora, who’d been with Johnson for a month, seemed to be making a lot of money, and Ari was lured by Johnson’s promises of helping her grow her Instagram and OnlyFans following. “[Cora] said you really want to be famous,” Johnson wrote in WhatsApp messages provided to Rolling Stone. “And that’s perfect cause that’s what we make people.”
“Yessss I wanna be rich,” Ari responded.
“Well perfect cause I want to be rich too lol,” Johnson responded.
Ari signed with Johnson, and for a few months, she says, he appeared to deliver on his word, with Ari making $75,000 in the first month. Then she realized he wasn’t actually giving her insight on how to grow her page or what type of content to post; according to Ari, he was just advertising her content on Instagram meme pages. (In a conversation with Rolling Stone, Johnson disputed this: “of course we advised on strategy,” he says.) Plus, her earnings were dropping; one month, she says, she only made $10-$15,000 out of $50,000 of earnings. When she confronted Johnson about this, he said he was spending much of that money on ads, but when Ari asked for proof of how much he was spending, he refused to show her any invoices or documentation, citing company secrets. And according to texts provided to Rolling Stone, he also publicly posted sexually explicit content that she had intended to only sell privately, though he apologized promptly after doing so. Ari says Johnson also pressured her to produce more content, though Johnson denies this, providing text messages to Rolling Stone that he did give her time off when she requested it.
After Ari says she heard from another model that Johnson was not, in fact, partnered with Baddie, she’d had enough. “I realized he was taking too much from me and i felt it wasn’t worth it to continue carrying on,” she says. In February, she sent Johnson a WhatsApp message saying she wanted to terminate their contract. He responded by threatening to take legal action against her if she continued to post content on social media, referring to a sunset clause in the contract she’d signed. “All no competes and clauses of early termination will be applied, and appropriate action will be taken if they are not! Thanks for your time with NJAC,” he wrote in response, adding that Ari would also have to forfeit the previous 30 days’ worth of income.
Johnson tells Rolling Stone he only made such threats under pressure of a lawyer, and had no intention to enforce them. “I’m a reasonable person. I was like, ‘This is what the contract says,’ not, ‘this is what I want to do,’” he says. “She was being very emotional and not very respectful during that conversation.” He also says NJAC’s contracts no longer include sunset clauses or non-competes, though he declined to provide Rolling Stone with a copy of the updated contract.
After Ari left Johnson, she says, he continued to post as her under her Instagram and OnlyFans accounts and reselling explicit content she had already sold to her followers at a vastly reduced rate, leading to subscribers complaining about her scamming them. It was at this point that she hired attorney Anibal Luque to send a cease-and-desist to Johnson. When Johnson kept posting, Luque sent another one. (Johnson says he had agreed with Ari beforehand that he could post on the account for 30 days afterward, and stopped immediately after receiving the initial letter from her lawyer. He says he did not receive a follow-up letter because he was out of town at the time.)
In the months since she left Johnson, Ari says she’s heard from nearly half a dozen models who had similar experiences with him, including Cora, who also left after she alleges Johnson took 60-70 percent of her income. “Nathan was a very nice guy, until you didn’t comply with his agenda,” Cora says.
MEMPHIS — If you are a Verizon customer on the East Coast, odds are good that your cellphone or tablet arrived by way of a beige, windowless warehouse near Tennessee’s border with Mississippi.
Inside, hundreds of workers, many of them women, lift and drag boxes weighing up to 45 pounds, filled with iPhones and other gadgets. There is no air-conditioning on the floor of the warehouse, which is owned and operated by a contractor. Temperatures there can rise past 100 degrees. Workers often faint, according to interviews with 20 current and former employees.
One evening in January 2014, after eight hours of lifting, Erica Hayes ran to the bathroom. Blood drenched her jeans.
She was 23 and in the second trimester of her first pregnancy. She had spent much of the week hoisting the warehouse’s largest boxes from one conveyor belt to the next. Ever since she learned she was pregnant, she had been begging her supervisor to let her work with lighter boxes, she said in an interview. She said her boss repeatedly said no.
She fainted on her way out of the bathroom that day. The baby growing inside of her, the one she had secretly hoped was a girl, was gone.
“It was the worst thing I have ever experienced in my life,” Ms. Hayes said.
Three other women in the warehouse also had miscarriages in 2014, when it was owned by a contractor called New Breed Logistics. Later that year, a larger company, XPO Logistics, bought New Breed and the warehouse. The problems continued. Another woman miscarried there this summer. Then, in August, Ceeadria Walker did, too.
The women had all asked for light duty. Three said they brought in doctors’ notes recommending less taxing workloads and shorter shifts. They said supervisors disregarded the letters.
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.
They worked at a hospital, a post office, an airport, a grocery store, a prison, a fire department, a restaurant, a pharmaceutical company and several hotels.
But refusing to accommodate pregnant women is often completely legal. 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. Employees say that is how the warehouse’s current owner, XPO Logistics, operates.
For example, last October, a 58-year-old woman died of cardiac arrest on the warehouse floor after complaining to colleagues that she felt sick, according to a police report and current and former XPO employees. In Facebook posts at the time and in recent interviews, employees said supervisors told them to keep working as the woman lay dead.
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.
“We are deeply troubled by these allegations,” said a Verizon spokesman, Rich Young. “We have no tolerance — zero tolerance — for this sort of alleged behavior.” He said the company opened an internal investigation in response to The Times’s inquiry. “None of these allegations are consistent with our values or the expectations and demands of contractors that work directly for us or have any affiliation with us.”
Erin Kurtz, an XPO spokeswoman, said: “We’re surprised by the allegations of conduct that either predate XPO’s acquisition of the Memphis facility or weren’t reported to management after we acquired it in 2014.” She said the allegations “are unsubstantiated, filled with inaccuracies and do not reflect the way in which our Memphis facility operates.” The company also disputed that the warehouse was windowless, noting that there were a number of interior windows.
Ms. Kurtz said XPO prioritized the safety of its workers, had “no tolerance for any type of discriminatory behavior” and has enhanced pay and benefits for employees in recent years.
Those improvements didn’t help Ceeadria Walker when she got pregnant. The 19-year-old said she gave her XPO supervisor a doctor’s letter from OB/GYN Centers of Memphis saying she should not lift more than 15 pounds. She said she asked to be assigned to an area with lighter items. Ms. Walker said her supervisor regularly sent her to a conveyor belt line where she had to lift more than she was supposed to. She miscarried the day after spending her shift handling those heavier boxes.
A pregnant Ceeadria Walker continued lifting heavy boxes at XPO after being denied a reprieve. The day after a grueling shift in August, she miscarried.
“We’re saddened that Ms. Walker had a miscarriage over the summer,” Ms. Kurtz said. “We’re investigating these newly raised claims.”
The Risks of Lifting
For most women, it is safe to work while pregnant.
But there is “a slight to modest increased risk of miscarriage” for women who do extensive lifting in their jobs, according to guidelines published this year by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. The recommendations are intended to inform doctors about best practices.
Two decades of medical research have established a link between physically demanding work and fetal death, though there is debate about how strong the connection is. Part of the difficulty in measuring the relationship, researchers say, is that it’s impossible to design a study that isolates the impact of heavy lifting versus other risk factors, like pre-existing conditions.
In a peer-reviewed study from 2013, researchers in Denmark found that the risk of fetal death increased as women lifted heavier objects more frequently. The researchers theorized that lifting and bending could reduce blood flow to the uterus.
Another possibility, doctors said, is that extreme physical exertion diverts blood from a woman’s womb to her muscles.
The potential dangers are greatest for women whose pregnancies are already classified as high risk, which is why doctors often advise that they be given easier tasks.
“When employers ignore these medical recommendations, they are potentially jeopardizing patients’ health,” said Rebecca Jackson, the chief of obstetrics and gynecology at San Francisco General Hospital. “It’s especially bothersome to me that this is occurring for women in strenuous jobs, given that they are at the most risk of injuring themselves or the pregnancy.”
Warehouses are among the fastest growing workplaces in the country, employing more than a million Americans. Retailers, competing against the likes of Amazon, demand high speed at low costs.
On Memphis’s east side, these are often the highest-paying jobs available for people without college degrees. Drawn by the proximity to rail lines and highways, some of the country’s largest companies have set up distribution centers here. One dispatches Nike shoes. Another handles Disney toys. And a short drive from Graceland, Verizon has its hub.
XPO runs all of those warehouses. The Verizon facility, which XPO took over when it bought New Breed Logistics in 2014, is the only one where The Times interviewed workers about pregnancy discrimination. Shifts there can last 12 hours. Workers get 30 minutes for lunch and as many as three other 15-minute breaks.
XPO’s 2017 employee handbook warns that taking unapproved breaks, arriving to work late or leaving early can result in “immediate termination,” unless the reasons for the departures are “legally protected.” The Pregnancy Discrimination Act does not guarantee women such protections.
A Job on the Line
It was the fall of 2013, and Erica Hayes was convinced that she was having a girl. She daydreamed about the clothes she would buy and made a list of favorite names. Her friend was pregnant with a boy, and they talked about raising their children together.
At first, Ms. Hayes was processing individual shipments to Verizon customers — one phone, one charger, onto the next. Then, a crush of holiday orders hit the warehouse in December. She said that her boss began dispatching her to the area of the warehouse that handled bulk shipments, often destined for Verizon stores, where the warehouse was struggling to keep up. She often spent up to 12 hours a day lifting huge boxes, some with 20 iPads and 20 accessories.
She said she could have handled paperwork or stayed in the section of the warehouse devoted to small shipments. But she said her supervisor kept ordering her to work with the largest boxes. Ms. Hayes’s mother said that her daughter talked to her about the rejected requests at the time.
Ms. Hayes said she began to bleed regularly at work. She sometimes left early to go to the hospital. Each time, she said, her supervisor wrote her up. As the demerits accumulated, she stopped leaving. Instead, she bled through four maxi pads a day.
“My job was on the line,” she said. At the end of a long shift in January 2014, she felt blood gushing into her jeans.
A co-worker fetched her a black peacoat to wrap around her waist to cover the spreading stain. Another grabbed plastic bags to line the leather driver’s seat of her 2003 Hyundai. Ms. Hayes fainted before she could get to the car. An ambulance took her to the hospital.
A couple of weeks later, she said, her supervisor handed her a $300 invoice for the cost of the ambulance ride. (Ms. Hayes, who still works at the warehouse and is hoping for a promotion, said she never paid the bill.)
That spring, two more women had miscarriages at the warehouse. Both said that their supervisors rejected their requests to pack lighter boxes.
One of the women, who still works at the warehouse, declined to be identified for fear of losing her job.
The other was Tasha Murrell. She already had two boys and was praying for a girl. She planned to name the baby Dallas, after the Cowboys, her favorite football team. Ms. Murrell said that she told her boss she was pregnant and asked to leave work early one day that spring because the lifting had become painful.
While employed at the Verizon warehouse in 2014, Tasha Murrell, pregnant at the time, told a supervisor she was in pain and asked to leave early; the manager said no. Ms. Murrell miscarried the next day.
Ms. Murrell’s husband keeps the ultrasound from the pregnancy she lost in his wallet. It has become deeply creased from being in his wallet.
Her supervisor told her to get an abortion, according to a discrimination complaint she filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in April 2018. Ms. Murrell woke up the next morning to find her mattress stained with blood. Her husband drove her to the emergency room, where doctors told her she had miscarried. Ms. Murrell left the job last year and is now an organizer with the Teamsters, which is trying to organize a union at the warehouse.
Ms. Hayes and Ms. Murrell had the same supervisor: Amela Bukvic. Through her lawyer, Ms. Bukvic denied telling anyone to get an abortion. “I would never make such a horrible statement to anyone, especially an employee under my supervision,” she said.
Ms. Bukvic said that she made sure that the pregnant women whom she managed had workloads that were not excessive. She said she never denied help to the pregnant employees. “If they had any work restrictions, I always took all steps to make sure their work duties never exceeded those restrictions,” she said.
A few months later, in September 2014, it happened to another woman.
Chasisty Bee, 33, was four months pregnant. Hoping for a girl, she bought a newborn’s blanket from Burlington Coat Factory.
Ms. Bee had miscarried in 2008 while working at the Verizon warehouse. This time, she said, she brought in a doctor’s note recommending that she work shorter shifts, be given a chair and light duty. Supervisors rejected her requests. One afternoon, after almost 14 hours on her feet, she started feeling dizzy and crumpled to the warehouse floor. Her physician told her that she had miscarried.
After Ms. Bee got pregnant again in 2015, she found a new job. “I couldn’t bear to lose another child,” she said. The next February, she gave birth to a healthy girl.
Ms. Kurtz, the XPO spokeswoman, said: “The false and misleading allegations directed at our Memphis facility are fueled by the Teamsters and are part of their ongoing, but unsuccessful, attempts at organizing.”
Stalled Momentum
A bipartisan group of lawmakers has proposed upgrading the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act. The bill would compel companies to accommodate pregnant women — for example, by offering extra breaks or the option of light duty — as long as it does not impose an “undue hardship” on their business. That is the same language used in the Americans With Disabilities Act.
Women “shouldn’t have to choose between keeping a doctor appointment or their job,” said Senator Dean Heller, Republican of Nevada, one of 125 co-sponsors of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act in the House and Senate.
In 2015, it looked as if the bill might gain traction. The Supreme Court had just ruled in favor of Peggy Young, a UPS driver who was denied light duty after getting pregnant. Pregnancy discrimination was suddenly grabbing headlines.
But some Republicans, including Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, where the XPO warehouse is, viewed that bill as adding a confusing new layer of regulations, according to Senate aides. Mr. Alexander, who is chairman of the Senate committee on health and labor, co-sponsored a competing bill. It expanded protections for pregnant women in some cases. But it still allowed employers to deny accommodations if they weren’t being provided to other workers in similar situations.
“It was a useful mechanism in order to divert some of the momentum that was building,” said Emily Martin of the National Women’s Law Center, an advocacy group focused on women’s rights.
Both bills stalled.
Outside Washington, there have been fewer roadblocks. At least 23 states have passed laws that are stronger than current federal protections (Tennessee is not among them). In Utah, Delaware, Colorado and New York, Republicans led the charge. In Nebraska, an anti-abortion Democrat pushed the measure.
“Women have lost their children due to the lack of robust pregnancy protections in the workplace,” said Catherine Glenn Foster, the president of Americans United for Life, an anti-abortion group. “Anyone who can’t get behind this or uses it as a political game — it’s a travesty.”
XPO Logistics has had run-ins with regulators over labor issues. Last year, the state of California awarded four truck drivers $855,000 in back wages after XPO misclassified them as independent contractors.
‘I Watched Her Die’
The problems extend beyond the warehouse floor — to hotels, restaurants, fire stations and stores.
At the Albertsons grocery store in Atascadero, Calif., Reyna Garcia had one of the toughest jobs. She pushed 200-pound carts, dragged sacks of cat litter and climbed 10-foot ladders to stock goods.
Ms. Garcia got pregnant in July 2012, found out she was having a girl and decided to name the baby Jade.
Ms. Garcia told her boss that her pregnancy was high risk — she had previously given birth prematurely. She presented a doctor’s note saying she should not lift more than 15 pounds. The boss ignored the recommendation, according to a lawsuit she filed against Albertsons in federal court in Los Angeles.
“She was feeling like she wasn’t getting any response from her supervisor,” her doctor, Mareeni Stanislaus, said in an interview. She said the restrictions were “even more important” because Ms. Garcia had a high-risk pregnancy. Heavy lifting can prompt smooth muscles like the uterus to contract, potentially inducing preterm labor, Dr. Stanislaus said.
The regular twisting and hoisting caused intense pain, but Ms. Garcia needed the paycheck and the health insurance. She requested any other position — in the Albertsons bakery or at the meat counter or as a fruit cutter or in the pharmacy or at the customer service desk.
Her boss turned her down, according to the lawsuit, which included corroborating statements from her colleagues.
Her doctors sent two more notes. “She should avoid prolonged standing without a break and should avoid excessive bending and reaching and balancing,” Dr. Stanislaus wrote. Copies of the letters were included in the suit.
About three weeks later, in the middle of her shift, Ms. Garcia began feeling “pelvic pressure,” according to her lawsuit. She asked her boss for permission to leave early; he gave her a long list of tasks that she needed to finish first.
Ms. Garcia ended up working overtime. By the time she got home, she could feel her amniotic sac bulging between her legs. It felt “like a balloon coming out of me,” she said in a sworn statement. She went to the emergency room. She could feel something scratching from inside; her doctor told her it was the baby’s fingernails. She was 20 weeks pregnant.
Five days later, Ms. Garcia gave birth to Jade. The baby lived less than 10 minutes.
“My husband and I watched her die,” Ms. Garcia said in her statement. “It was the most painful thing I have ever experienced.”
In 2014, Albertsons settled Ms. Garcia’s lawsuit for an undisclosed amount; the deal prohibited her from speaking publicly about what happened. “The company has a policy against pregnancy discrimination, and we accommodate employees with pregnancy-related disabilities in accordance with state and federal law,” said Christine Wilcox, an Albertsons spokeswoman.
Ms. Garcia’s boss demoted her when she returned to work.
“I lost my baby for this job,” Ms. Garcia said, according to her lawsuit. “Why didn’t you give me help when I was pregnant and asked for it?”
On January 5, 2023, the Federal Trade Commission proposed a new rule – accessible at https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/federal-register-notices/non-compete-clause-rulemaking — that would ban employers from imposing non-competes on their workers, a widespread and often exploitative practice that suppresses wages, hampers innovation, and blocks entrepreneurs from starting new businesses. The proposed rule provides that: “It is an unfair method of competition for an employer to enter into or attempt to enter into a non-compete clause with a worker; maintain with a worker a non-compete clause; or represent to a worker that the worker is subject to a non-compete clause where the employer has no good faith basis to believe that the worker is subject to an enforceable non-compete clause.” The proposed rule would also require the rescission of all non-competition agreements entered into before the date the new rule takes effect.
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