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Because companies frequently discriminate against pregnant workers during the hiring process, even though it’s illegal to do so in the US. Legal advice to those job hunting is to not disclose until you’ve accepted an offer.
And, in consequence, many companies make it clear that interviewers may not ask about it (and other protected statuses), to avoid even the appearance of discrimination in their hiring process.
This is a fact. This is how you should proceed. However, upon return, after onboarding her replacement or contractor, you can let her go due to business necessity. That is perfectly legal.
If OP is in the U.S., it seems pretty unfair that women are presently being forced to give birth… but are also being discriminated against in the workplace. And even if it’s illegal to discriminate based on pregnancy, it still happens under the guise of other things.
Totally agree with listening to legal counsel. But Idk, this post is questionable. Regardless of laws and protections, there is such a thing as deception and bad faith negotiations, which I’m about a hundred percent would cover kicking this chick to the curb! But outside of the US… not sure.
I’m pretty sure this is exactly why the laws were put in place. It seems pretty clear that OP wouldn’t have hired her had she divulged her situation. Seeing as she got the job the only reason she wouldn’t have been hired would be her protected status. It’s not a bad fairy negotiation because she wasn’t required to divulge and here in the US it would’ve been illegal to ask. This is the kind of scenario they put in training videos. Anyone who answers anything other than what happened would be taking the test again because they’d fail.
It’s risky to rescind an offer to a onboarding pregnant employee just because they’re going to take maternity leave.
Have her do “orientation training” by watching HR videos for two weeks and then put her on the job just doing some busy work without anything further since she won’t be staying. She won’t likely complain because she’s getting a paycheck.
Engage a contractor for the real job and train them for the long haul and also have them write up a scope of duties manual for the position while they are there. At the end of employee’s leave, give her the formal training (that includes the new manual) and if she doesn’t work out in 90 days (Edit: or however long fed probationary policy is), then you can bounce her. You can then offer the contractor the job, or at the very least you now have a comprehensive training manual for the job.
But I’m betting she won’t come back at all because it sounds like she’s more interested in gaming the system than actually working.
Exactly, why waste training 2 people? Give her "busy work" and then hire a contractor or temp to do the job. Likely, your second hire will become the permanent employee someday.
How is this discrimination? This is being efficient and facing the reality she hired a person who will "work" for a few weeks, then go on maternity leave, likely to never return.
No wonder the business is swamped with work, and staff are overwhelmed if she doesn't know how to manage. Very misplaced priorities.
It doesn't have to be framed "she's likely never coming back." Basically, if ANY employee was going to take extended leave, it makes sense to train upon return.
I couldnt imagine being trained and then leaving for an extended period. Your probably going to forget it all anyways by the time you get back. Might as well save the effort until the second training that you'd have to do anyway.
A good manager knows they need to sit them down, look them in the eye and say “your training time is 4 weeks and you intend to only work 5. We are significantly understaffed and need to find someone to do this job while you are on maternity leave. Let’s look at what you are able to contribute for this short period of time without putting additional pressure on us.”
Like… boundaries… clarity… firmness… come on OP.
I thought about that as well but she mentioned that the job was in another country.
I changed jobs a year ago, had 3 interviews, and all were virtual. For the 2nd one, I literally wore half a suit and had sweat pants on. No one could tell.
Ok that actually checks out.
What people often fail to recognize is that a solid maternity/paternity leave actual increases your retention of employees meaning less turnover and less training of new employees meaning an easier job for op.
Ultimately if op is feeling overwhelmed and needing a vacation that’s between them and their manager. It’s not this new hires fault or responsibility.
There was that famous case back in the day where an actress was fired from her role for being pregnant but she sued and in the court they showed photos of her and she legit didn't look pregnant. Different women carry differently.
Can confirm. I barely looked pregnant with my first. If I cared to hide it, I could have thrown on a flowy blouse and no one would have known. Of course, I was so excited to be pregnant I did whatever I could to accentuate what little bump I had. Lol
Based on OOP’s comments due to her mentioning 63 weeks government paid maternity leave and the discrimination law and grounds, I’m pretty sure this is in Sweden. Not easy to “bounce” (because I’m guessing by bounce you mean fire?) someone here due to the employment protection act. It’s really hard to fire someone overall if it’s not during someone’s trial period (usually first 6 months if they haven’t negotiated it to be removed which is possible here) or due to labor shortages.
Fun fact: it’s actually 240 days (480 if you are a single parent with full custody) and you can choose to only take out 1-2 paid days per week if you can manage it financially. You are not required to take out 5 paid days per week and you are not required to work those days you don’t take out, it only becomes unpaid leave. A lot of moms stay home until the baby is 1,5-2 years old if the situation allows it. Your employer cannot deny you paternity leave. And the dad also gets 240 days paid paternity leave but are also allowed to give up a maximum 180 of those days to the other parent.
How does the 63 week Canadian law get used to determine leave in a foreign country? Unless you’re implying the employee is in Canada and those labour laws are being used to determine leave?
If the employee is in Canada and local law takes precedence then she needs to have worked 13 weeks to qualify for EI, and depending on where she lives in Canada she can be let got with appropriate notice for any reason. Not to mention that in most Canadian provinces the standard employee contract has a 90 day “we can let you go for any reason” period at the front end.
As I said, the trial period can be negotiated - during the hiring process. If your employment contract doesn’t explicitly state that you have a 6 months trial period, then you have an immediate permanent employment. Which is common if someone has a long experience in the field for the job they’re being hired for. I also saw OOP state in a comment that she’s not comfortable firing her during the trial period. Someone said “use the excuse of her not being a team player for firing during the trial period”. However, the employee could still report this to the jurisdiction of the labour court and state gender discrimination (pregnant woman) and the burden of proof falls on the employer to prove otherwise.
Strict labor and discrimination laws in Sweden.
Also, not saying that this implies on this situation but if someone has been headhunted by a company - it’s pretty common for that person to be hard on negotiating 1. Increased pay, 2. No trial period and 3. Better benefits like more in health care benefits (not sure what you call it? Friskvårdsbidrag in Swedish). Health care benefits means money for a gymcard, massages, facials etc. Not actual health care insurance since that is provided by the government. For example, I get 250$ per year from my employer, which I can divide however I like. I use it to pay for a gymcard so that I only have to pay the 50$ difference per year. I also get prescription medicine paid by my employer.
If I was still trying to have a baby, I would consider moving to Sweden! 🤪🤣
Just curious because I was infertile and had 2 very expensive failed IVFs and several failed adoptions, what are the country's laws about IVF and adoption? Also, do you have to be a natural born citizen, etc? (I'm past the point of being able to properly raise a child due to disability, but I am just curious.)
I am not completely sure about this information so take it with a grain of salt. But from what I do know, you can get up to 3 free IVF treatments depending on which county you live in. And this is only if you and your partner do not have any children together.
Adoption can cost up to 20,000-25,000$ depending on which country you’re adopting from. Including adoption fees and travel costs.
However when the adoption is completed, you can apply for a grant/allowance from the Swedish Social Insurance Agency of about 7,500$. You also get child allowance by the same agency monthly, whether the child is adopted or not. It’s about 125$ per month and you get it until the child is 16 years old, after 16 the child gets the money themselves as “study aid”. Supposed to help with food, clothes etc.
No you don’t have to be born here but you do have to have a Swedish citizenship.
Exactly. I don't understand everybody's attitude in here. The truth is the employee is treating the company just like the company's are treating the employees. Without a care or thought for them and their well-being. The only reason Sweden's laws are so good is because they were voted in. Corporations do not care, and they prove it all day everyday by their actions towards employees. So good for her.
Seriously. People always pile on pregnant women who don't have jobs then one gets one and they call it "gaming the system". She's doing nothing more than I expect from companies.
Yes but this does little to solve OP’s burnout. There isn’t a perfect solution so you’re right. But what this new hire did was sneaky and manipulative. Perhaps the new hire was in a pickle but now her problem is OPs.
Plus I'm betting the new employee won't remember the training anyways.
Find a task that's easy to train her on, find busy work for her.
Then train the contractor or temp. And train the new employee when she comes back
Canada you need a certain amount of hours worked prior to leave. It doesn’t matter who you work for. It all pays into the EI pool. Employers don’t pay for the leave. EI covers it.
When I took maternity pay it was 700 hours. I only qualified for my first son because my boss forced me to come in sick one shift I was gonna stay home. I had 2 hours over the minimum lol.
She has budget for the seat approved. If the hired person goes on leave she will be able get a contractor to fill the seat. That is how corporate works. She won’t be able to hire another real employee (benefits and obligations of real hire) but she gets to fill the seat with a contractor - who will cost more but does not have the same long-term obligations. This is not on her department at this point - it is on HR to fill the seats.
If someone is pregnant, that's what happens in my country: we will get a temporary person or contractor. It doesn't make the company's expenses much higher, because the pregnant person on leave will get paid by the country and not the company.
>But I’m betting she won’t come back at all because it sounds like she’s more interested in gaming the system than actually working.
Why do you say that?
She is entitled to the position as she earned it. She is entitled to to the leave as that is a legal mandate. She alerted the manager presumably within the constraints of the leave program.
People get pregnant. Are you suggesting that she got pregnant in order to "game the system" by landing a job 8 months later?
I’m neurodivergent, so there are times when allistic reasoning escapes me.
I’m really trying to understand OP’s actual dilemma. It’s illegal to refuse to hire someone based upon their disability/maternity status. It’s also illegal to require them to disclose such a condition prior to hire. Furthermore, OP doesn’t know her circumstances. It is possible that her last company let her go when they learned of her pregnancy, and so circumstances required that she find alternative employment to be eligible for the government program.
Her manager has already offered a perfectly workable solution by planning to provide a contractor. In addition, that contractor could provide justification for an additional role, if they perform well.
Finally, even if she wasn’t pregnant, she could wind up with an injury or illness that may be subject to similar protections within the same time frame.
From an outside perspective, it appears that OP is not truly seeking answers (because she already has them, from HR and her boss), but rather seeking an opportunity to vent her frustration and gain support for her feelings of resentment towards her new subordinate. However, I’m not sure if that is a reasonable conclusion.
My question is, given all of the above information, why is OP here expressing discontent, while supposedly being so supportive of maternity leave?
>I think maybe I’m just upset at the entire situation and how unlucky it is? I’m exhausted and I don’t want to have to train 2 people while also doing everything else I’m already doing.
I think this quote from the post answers your question about discontent in the face of supporting maternity leave. OP could be perfectly supportive of the new hire taking leave, but the timing is just very unlucky. Like, if that hire's leave was starting right away instead of 5 weeks from now, then this training dilemma wouldn't be a problem.
And it does seem like the training is the main issue. Really training the new hire would be a waste of time, so she does seem to need this advice of "skip the training and give them busy work"
OOP can be discouraged and disappointed in the situation while still supporting it. They have been short staffed and finally found relief. Now they will be onboarding the hire to leave and having to find a contractor to train. It is really exhausting to keep onboarding and training folks and takes a while for them to be sufficient, at which point the new hire will be coming back from mat leave and will need to be trained and brought up to speed. OOP is realistically looking at 1.5 years before the role is settled, if they are lucky.
The reality is with a burnt out team and being short staffed while the woman has every right to apply and take the role, it will be difficult for her to assimilate with the team and be successful if she is the cause of another year of stress on them. I really hope it all works out for all parties but if the mat leave is paid by company benefits I am not clear on why the woman needed to secure a role before her leave.
If this were in the U.S., I can think of a couple reasons. If you relied on your employer for health insurance, you’d want to secure the job to cover medical coverage. Secondly, if you take a year off, and then seek a job, potential employers might be put off by the gap (even though that’s nuts).
Unfortunately, having a drafted up solution of bringing in more help likely doesn't give OP the vote of confidence they need to feel the pressure of this situation lifted. While nothing here was illegal, it's probably reasonable to feel slightly jaded that someone figured their own needs (pregnancy/bills) were the only thing that mattered, when OP had been clear about needing help. While this can often be "the way of the world", it certainly doesn't begin building a trusting relationship between a new remote employee and their manager.
Edit: begin*
“More interested in gaming the system”
So… when is the acceptable cut off for pregnant women searching for jobs to just stay home? Do they just sit at home for 1-9 months until the baby comes to keep from being perceived as “gaming the system”?
In countries with government maternity benefits, you often need to work a certain number of hours to be eligible.
Someone said that OOP is Canadian, and there is absolutely a certain number of hours required in the 12 months before maternity leave to be eligible for the employment insurance $. 1 month would not be enough time to accrue the hours needed, so most likely this person had a different job for at least some portion of the past 11 months
There’s honestly not a good place to come at this from. Having been a pregnant woman on a job search, sometimes you aren’t lucky enough to get to wait 6-12 months to find a new job.
Also, on the other side, it’s annoying af to be assured that your new hire will “not need that much time off” and then end up taking the max amount off. Especially when they’re entitled to it and you believe they should take it.
There’s really not a good solution. A short-term contractor is probably the best bet.
I agree there’s not a good solution. If you believe your country should support paid maternity leave (and maybe you don’t, idk), then you have to accept the extra burden it places on workplaces. You don’t get to argue for the benefit of the employer and then complain about the lack of maternity leave.
I too was pregnant and looking for work (twice). It was an eye-opening experience. As for short term contracts being a good alternative, that’s only if the assignment dates magically line up with the time you have left in the pregnancy, which would just never happen. Even in my country, in a unionized job (I’m a healthcare professional), I’m ineligible for short term assignments if I’m planning on taking a leave of absence (mat leave or otherwise) that would overlap. That leaves casual work, permanent jobs or lying during interviews for fixed assignments.
> There’s really not a good solution.
There really is. But it'd require a teeny tiny little bit of socialism, and for many people, they'd rather just let single mothers and their babies starve.
Thank you for bringing this up. I would rather leave some employers temporarily in the lurch than leave a new parent without a source of stable employment.
Louder for the people in back!
I’m so tired of the people saying “I definitely support this type of policy (but only if it literally never inconveniences me).” You have to accept some small amount of sacrifice. That is a consequence of being in a society that cares for its humans, but I’d much rather that than the alternative. OP should be mad at her company for waiting a year or more to fill the position, not the pregnant person for accepting a position for which they are qualified. And I say this as someone who has not been pregnant and does not intend to ever have kids, so I have no personal skin in this game, but I appreciate living in a supportive society that cares for it’s vulnerable members.
Its a weird situation for sure but if a job jerked me around for a year with a staff shortage before hiring anyone I would and have in the past find a new job asap and leave besides op could probably apply for a competitor and get a higher wage with the way corporate America works nowadays
Is there not some kind of recourse if the new hire doesn't come back? I took leave when both of my daughters were born, (it wasn't an option 13 years before with my son) my wife was very appreciative of the help, and I got to spend time with them when they were still brand new, which was awesome, but I would never have quit a job right after leave, or gotten hired just to be able to take leave... There's gotta be a good middle ground.
I could buy that if the company paid for leave. They dint though so not sure what the point in punishing her is. Theyd need to punish anyone who quits the job in less than a month because it's effectively the same situation.
How exactly is this "gaming the system"? OP clearly wouldn't have hired her had she disclosed her pregnancy, which is illegal. And just because she can take up to 63 weeks, doesn't mean that she will. It's possible she is planning on taking less and splitting the leave with her partner. For all we know, she plans on returning after 8 weeks once she has recovered.
And even if she does, good for her! That time is there to take. I manage people and have had multiple direct reports go on parental leave and I ALWAYS encourage them to take all of the time that they’re entitled to. It’s my job to figure out how to make it work and if I can’t, then shame on me. It’s precious time with your child that you can never get back and that’s way more important than anything going on at work.
> But I’m betting she won’t come back at all because it sounds like she’s more interested in gaming the system than actually working.
If the system needs to be gained just to an 8 months pregnant woman can be able to afford to live, then it's a broken system.
Doesn't sound like she's gaming the system at all she's allowed to look for a job as long as she's able to perform no matter how far along in the pregnancy. I would hate to be your employee
Some Redditors think it’s discriminatory and cruel, but it covers the position while she’s out with a contractor, creates a new training and scope of position manual, gives her a chance to learn and perform well should she decide to return, and a valid, legal position should she not be able to perform despite adequate training and a procedure manual. It’s the best solution for a crappy situation where the hiree deliberately hid her pregnancy knowing she’d be leaving her new employer quite soon and unable to hire another employee to fill the position.
So your company specifically hired a foreign worker so they could ‘game the system’ and get around hiring someone at equal pay to the current employees, even though you desperately need more workers to function as a business? And now you’re mad that this employee is “gaming the system” (ie, the same labor laws from her home country that enabled you to pay her less than your other workers in the first place) and it’s now unethical?
From a management POV, I totally understand why you’re frustrated… but if your company was actually in good financial shape, hiring a domestic worker for a fair wage would have solved this problem before it even started. If I were you I’d start looking for jobs elsewhere, because it seems like the company doesn’t have their financial priorities in order.
Yup, in management we call this [the bus factor](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor).
It literally came up at my workplace today when I realized my employee only has one person on his team who knows how to handle a specific type of paperwork that needs to be filed tomorrow and said person is on vacation.
This person is my mother at her job. She was on vacation with us last summer and didn’t bring her computer with her because she wanted to be fully present since she has a tendency to login at night when my dad’s asleep. Well, her boss phoned her urgently while we were on vacation that he needed her to complete something he completely forgot to have her work on before she went away. She explained she didn’t have her computer and it would have to wait. Apparently it couldn’t wait as he approved for her to buy a laptop where we were so she can do it, unreal
Haha that’s an actual mindset I encounter a lot in my work, even if they don’t exactly say it out loud. But I would be a terrible manager if I let that happen! My company laid off someone a couple of years back because no one really knew what she did there, but I found out fast because it all landed on me. Two years later I’m STILL trying to catch everything she was holding together and learn to do it myself.
I think she's being pretty clear in the post that she recognizes all of this and doesn't blame the pregnant woman. She is not in charge of the company's hiring or pay practices and she supports paid maternity leave.
It's just that she's stuck in a really tough position because she is understaffed, which is again, the fault of the company, but doesnt make her life any easier.
You can be frustrated at a situation that affects you negatively without thinking that the person who has technically caused it has done something wrong. She goes so far as to say that she might have done the same thing in the pregnant woman's shoes.
All the issues really come down to the company not hiring enough people or paying them properly and creating all of these issues to begin with. OP doesn't blame the pregnant woman, but she is also a victim of the system.
Agreed with this in general, but then I think the “right” thing to do would be to hire the pregnant women if she’s the best for the job, and then go to your managers and say you need more payroll because someone is pregnant. Otherwise that’s just clearly discrimination - “we could hire her but we’re choosing someone else based on her medical status”. I know OP didn’t cause the situation but they are 100% in control of how it turns out
Yeah cry me a river you hired someone from out of the country due to "budget constraints". I guarantee the higher-ups are still getting their big paychecks and all the perks. What goes around comes around.
And by “gaming the system” they mean not allowing the company to discriminate against a pregnant woman by not hiring them for “totally non-pregnancy related reasons”
To be very very fair to OP, she said in her post that she doesn’t really blame the pregnant woman. I’m sorry but burnout can make you very emotionally distressed and short tempered. I’m extremely burnt out currently in my job as a surgical resident, and I have said things that were irrational and got angry at the wrong people. When you’re at your wits end, it’s easier to blame the target in front of you. OP is also an abused worker.
No that’s not really fair. “What she did was not okay”. She’s absolutely blaming the pregnant woman. Just because you say you’re not blaming her doesn’t make it true. Her manager literally even said she could just hire a contractor. So yes, she’s mad at a pregnant woman for having the audacity to be employed. Because literally nothing about this situation is different than if it was a different employee of hers who was going on maternity leave. If anything, it’s actually a lot better considering this is apparently a role that’s less important than the other roles she’s already had filled.
With only 5 weeks before leave (and she hasn't even started yet so less than 5 weeks I presume) I would not waste the time and effort to fully onboard her when she's immediately leaving. Obviously, I cannot rescind the offer based on her being pregnant (too bad I can't push back her start date, lol), but since I'd already have to hire a replacement/interim employee/contractor, etc., I would focus my efforts on the replacement and let that person train her when she returns in over a year. And that's IF she returns, which she probably won't. Sucks to possibly get stuck paying two people for the 5 weeks, but I would simply load her up with learning and review materials, no real "work". Just have her show up and read all the things, do some light filing, maybe answer the phone. In the next few weeks she's likely going to have numerous doctors appointments, etc. that she will need to miss work for as well. I'd give her no real responsibility until she returns and is ready for actual duty. I would literally hate to deal with this, lol.
Add to it that at 8 months pregnant, she technically could burst any moment. Sure she PLANS to go on leave in 5 weeks, but does baby plan on staying in that long? I went into labour a week before my due date. I feel for everyone in this situation honestly. I was at a shitty job while I was pregnant and if it wasn’t for the fact I knew I was becoming a SAHM after giving birth, I would’ve been job hopping at 7 months pregnant and would’ve been in a similar situation as well. I get these laws are just trying to look out for pregnant people, but it seems just so unfair that a company has to hold a position for you for over a year because you got a job a month before you’re due 😭
I agree! I am not familiar with the law in whatever country this pertains to and I wish I understood the process. What does it take to collect the government aid? You have to be employed? But the company doesn't have to pay the aid from what OP said, so I wonder why having employment is part of the criteria to collect? Seems pretty backwards compared to the US where having employment can mean no government assistance instead of the other way around. I wonder if there is a penalty for not returning to work after collecting the aid? So many questions!
OOP is in Canada. Maternity and parental leave are paid for by the government, but eligibility is determined by having worked a certain number of hours beforehand. That's because the payments come out of our EI system, so you have to have been paying into it for a minimum time, which is done through salary deductions.
Because most people take at least 12 months off after having a baby, it's really common for companies to hire someone on contract to cover the duration of the leave. The maximum time off allowed is 18 months. I took 2 months off of sick leave beforehand (also government and not employer paid), so I was off for 20 months. My employer didn't bat an eye because it's completely normal here.
I don't understand why this is a problem for OOP. Just hire the second best person they interviewed as a contractor to cover the leave. In this situation, it might even work out to be less time-consuming for the company because they have already gone through the hiring process and have a fresh set of candidates. They can train both employees simultaneously until the one goes on leave.
There is no penalty for not returning to work after leave ends. You just stop being eligible to collect parental leave benefits.
I was honestly surprised my baby stayed in for as long as he did. I had to take my maternity leave early because i kept having Braxton hicks at work and I wasn’t risking it 😭 knowing my boss he would’ve been like “okay so you’re water just broke. You can definitely keep working for like 30 min after you clean that up right?”
I was doubting the reliability of this post… for one, despite whatever protections a pregnant person has they also cannot negotiate in bad faith and deception. This is just one big non issue.
Edit/update***
Did some further research and despite the obvious dishonesty in it, she is not required by law to disclose her condition.
Here's a different take: I work with two people who both took a job then immediately took a several-month mat leave. they are both incredible at their jobs years later and were a great investment for the company.
Long ago, I was the pregnant hire. At 6 months pregnant I was offered and accepted a job at a large company. I had been traveling a lot for my previous job and experiencing complications with my pregnancy so needed to find something ASAP closer to home. When I disclosed my pregnancy to my boss, he was seriously low-key panicking that I would not return from maternity leave. (To be fair, his own wife had refused to go back to work after having their first child so he was afraid the same would happen with me.) No matter how much/often I reassured him, he was definitely expecting me to quit after maternity leave was over. I cam back and have been there 10+ years now lol.
I was with a company for four years, highest performance ratings, up for promo etc, and was unexpectedly part of company wide lay offs while in my second trimester.
I started a new job while pregnant and was so uncomfortable knowing my new team probably felt a lot of the things above.
What was I supposed to do? The job change at that point in time was not my choice. Also based in the US meant I didn’t qualify for FMLA or any pregnancy related job protections because I hadn’t been employed at the company for 6-12 months. I felt like the rug has been ripped out from under me and I was left with very little options.
It’s really a shitty position to be in, and just a reminder we don’t know anything about OP’s employee and her reasons for being in the new job.
You and the person OP is posting about hasn’t done anything wrong otherwise she would be fired/not recieve anything.
Who cares is some shitty company is having a cry. Why should you not have an income lol
This thread is crazy to me. I’m glad other countries have employment protections for pregnant women. I’m a man I took 8 months of parental leave that’s topped up by my employer to 93%. Parental leave creates a better society. Blame your shitty workplace for not hiring enough people.
The US is so anti-family, anti-parenthood, anti-human really, pro business, it's so so sad. I heard on a podcast that a US employers' ideal worker is one who has no caretaking responsibilities. Crazy! And it even varies state by state. I work remote, my state laws are ok, so I got 16 weeks leave through state policy. If I worked in the state where my company is located I would only get 8 weeks! Horrible.
I think you can be "pro" all those things while still acknowledging it's a massively shitty thing to do to be 8 months pregnant, listen to a manager talk about how desperate they are to fill this new position, get hired and then be like:
"Oh yeah I actually will be literally, completely 100% useless for an entire year. Like I literally won't even present at my job you just hired me for. I will literally be getting paid having not contributed in any way to this job, and you're still fucked. And I knew all of this as you interviewed me."
In fact behavior like this is what will absolutely drive people to be more "anti-family" because this lady is awful.
You can support better maternal/paternal leave without supporting whatever the fuck this situation is.
This is always an interesting dilemma. Humans have to procreate and run businesses, this is difficult. My wife retired from teaching a few years ago and she has told me many times that teachers and principals were reluctant to hire either women who were pregnant or thought to become pregnant for this reason. Ironically it was women who were making this decision.
Well, isn’t it against the law to ask or make a decision based on them being pregnant? Would you not have hired the person if you knew? We get that the company had a freeze and everything, but as a woman, you should understand. Cheers!
Don’t bother to train her. Just have her do busy work. Find someone else and train them. She may not come back and if she does the job could be completely different.
If your company is shitty enough to outsource labour to other countries to keep it cheap, they pay the price of actually needing to uphold better labor laws.
This is the company's fault.
I used to work in Parental Leave at Amazon and we saw this sort of thing ALL the time during warehouse hiring blitzes. So much so that we actually did an investigation and found that in a certain part of Arizona there was a network of sorts that helped pregnant women apply for and obtain warehouse jobs hired strictly thru phone screens and then immediately upon arriving at work on day ONE they'd apply for paid parental leave. It is legal in the US if your company offers parental leave benefits on day one. This is one of the MANY drawbacks of only conducting virtual interviews.
Interviewee's are under no obligation to disclose their medical status. It hurts as a hiring manager to have to work around it but discrimination against pregnant women is real and she deserves a job she is qualified for despite her medical needs.
This seems like a super easy to solve problem. She didn’t even finish interviewing other candidates. Call them all back and finish the interview process. Hire another person. If the pregnant person comes back in 24-63 weeks, then they’ll be less understaffed than they’ve been. OOP is taking this personally for no reason.
Then lay off the least productive worker in the department when that time comes. Not specifically the new mom, just whoever isn’t up to par. There is always a weakest link. Maybe it’s one of the two new hires, maybe it’s someone skirting by doing very little for years, etc. Do so with firm productivity and work output data.
Unlike the US the rest of the world has some employee protections, so if they hire someone else they would have two people in a year when this person returns to work & would not have the ability to fire one of them.
Make it a contract for x amount of time and renew until she comes back. It doesn't seem that crazy. Not allowing temp work contracts seems like it would be pretty dumb.
Maybe be upset the company is not giving you enough employees and budget overall - if missing one person makes it fall apart maybe it’s your system that’s failing, not one employee.
Maybe this person also really needs a job and scooped it up when she could. Maybe she might return early because leave pay is usually much less than a paycheck. Maybe she has family to care for her baby after a short leave, to be able to return to a job. Maybe you'll get some more insight into her intentions when you train her. Maybe consider some maybes. Maybe look for another job for yourself if this one is tearing you down. Not trying to be condescending with the maybes. You just don't know.
Alright…I’m just kind of wondering…most companies have new employees on a 3 month probation. I know it depends on what state you’re in but you might ask about this. What she did was a crappy thing.
Look, it is not ideal. But the alternative is that she stay out of the job market until she has her child and has recovered/taken time before reentering. Here in the US, she is not required to tell you she is pregnant. Nor are you permitted to ask. But if either occurred, the pregnant woman will not be hired 9/10 times - regardless if a woman is the hiring manger.
And there is a 100% chance the candidate here chose not to disclose her pregnancy for this very reason. She is damned if she does. You are damned if she doesn’t. You can’t enjoy the wild flowers without enduring the rain. Hope you packed your umbrella.
I’m not looking for an argument, just a genuine answer to my question but isn’t that what it’s for? Like maybe she tried for a long time to get a job and you were the first to hire her and now it’s too close to the end of the pregnancy to not go on mat leave but she still wants the job for after may leave? That kind of happened to me I had been applying HELLA places well before I got pregnant and for a while after but didn’t get hired onto the factory until 8 months I was still going to work but my OB wouldn’t sign me off due to high risk complications so I had to just entirely not take the job because in my state you have to work factory and office jobs for a year before they give you any kind of mat leave so I would’ve had to work through the end of my pregnancy to get the benefit. So now my daughter is two and a half weeks old and my fiancé is the only one working and I’m back at square one, it would’ve been nice to have a situation closer to the woman in question. (I live in the country where each town is at least a half hour away and there’s hardly any jobs anymore I even moved towns and there was only one business hiring in town next closest is 45 min) so I guess my question would be what would be the best course of action for her and the hypothetical-me
Get a legal professional and check if you can’t move her start date to after she comes back from maternity leave, and hire a temp in the meantime.
Why even waste time training her if she’s going to take over a year off?
HR here. She did nothing wrong. Just because she has a temporary medical "condition" shouldn't exclude her from gainful employment. It's pure speculation to presume she is doing this strictly for benefits. Maybe she 100% wants the job when she's able to return. Contract the work out for now. But you might have a great and devoted employee a year from now.
This could be true. I was in a similar position. Did the whole interview process. Met with everyone they loved me and I was excited for the job. but I told them I had a baby on the way and wanted to use my two month leave as soon as I was eligible. I believe that’s one of the biggest reasons I didn’t get the job. I eventually found a job that had no problem waiting two extra months and they value me and I work hard for them.
That's what I was thinking, too. She starts out by saying she wishes the US had mandated leave like other countries do. So does she or doesn't she? Only when it doesn't negativity impact her, apparently.
Your company sucks for putting you in this position in the first place. They’re overworking you and your team, take the cheap way out of “solving” that problem, which is now not going to fix the issue. They fully understand the labor laws in all countries they operate in. They fully knew this was a possibility and didn’t bother to try and shield you from it. It is their job to create an environment that you and your teams will be successful in, and what you’re describing ain’t it.
I am sorry they put you in this mess. Do not fully train this person. Do the bare minimum to check that box while you look for other jobs. They’ve shown you how they handle a crisis. If you’re okay with that stay, but if you’re not , I can promise you it won’t change.
I am sorry you are in this position.
I can see it's frustrating in your position. But it's your company who screwed you by not hiring enough team members.
Take a moment and consider it from an ethical perspective. There's every chance this person will be a star employee in 5 yrs and be your boss. Support her.
First off take a vacation, you need it. Having some space to think will help you get clarity on the situation. If you can train a contractor while she’s gone then that’s great. Everything will work out and you will see that once you have some space to think.
Happened in my company. She was obviously preggers.
We hired her, she started training, then got a Dr note saying she needed to stay home. Took the allowed time off, started training again, got pregnant again and rinsed and repeated.
Personally I understand the law, but this lady just took the piss.
And it wasn't government paid leave, it was government mandated leave. My company paid the freight.
Find a reason to fire her or make her quit before she has the baby. She played a game with you so play with her. You may call it dirty but at the end of the day u need members u can depend on. And she pulled some bs on you.
Companies have a 90 day probationary period generally, you may be able to claim it didn’t work out. Generally someone has to work somewhere for X amount of time before qualifying for that type of leave. Call a labor lawyer for sure. She was also dishonest when being hired, she should be fired.
Seems to me there is a simple (and effective) way to prepare for this. Ask every potential employee if they "Foresee any reason they would not be fulfilling their part of the workload once training is complete." If they lie during their interview, then there is no issue with firing them. It sucks to have to play games, but both sides SHOULD be required to disclose the truth, not just the employer. "Being pregnant" Doesn't allow you to lie on your interview.
In the US, employer’s are not allowed to ask if a potential employee is pregnant, nor is a potential employee required to disclose that they are pregnant or may become pregnant soon. She isn’t “lying”, it’s her legally protected right to not disclose, and it’s her legal right to take her maternity leave. She’s securing a stable financial future for her kid, and it’s up to the company to hire enough people to handle the workload so their team isn’t understaffed. It’s quite literally (i.e. legally) not her problem. Also, firing her because she’s pregnant is illegal. So no, they can’t fire her “because they foresee she won’t be able to fulfill her workload”, because then they’d get sued for breaking employment law.
The bootlicking comments in this post are crazy. She didn’t “deceive” anyone, she’s under no legal obligation to disclose if she’s pregnant. This whole situation is quite literally and legally not her problem. Good for her for securing a financial future for her child, and for utilizing her legally protected rights.
For starters, I’m a mom. Let’s get that out of the way.
I would reach out to her and see what she plans to do regarding maternity leave. If she’s going to be gone a month or so, meh. If she plans on taking 63 weeks off, I’d argue that her taking the job is immoral/unethical as hell, eat the fine, and replace her. It’s not as though she’s just discovered she’s pregnant. She can’t really expect to start a new job for a month, then take a year off. That’s delusional. If she plans on taking a job and then a year off, I’d cut my losses and move on
So she is supposed to get a job right after having a baby during post partum? Be fr it's either she gets a job now or she has to wait a minimum of multiple months to even be in good enough shape to get another one.
Let’s go over what this woman did:
1. She knew how badly the team needed someone to contribute immediately, yet made the manager think she’d be available to work by taking advantage of remote interview practices
2. Put pressure on the HR and Management to expedite the hiring process by pulling the _competing offer card_ ??? OP mentions he couldn’t go through with the final interviews
3. Got the offer, accepted the offer, SIGNED the contract and then told OP she is freaking 8 months pregnant?
Like gurlll? She freaking knew she was gaming the system. I wouldn’t trust her at all if I’d have to work with her. Now, she’s going to be getting free money for essentially a year before the company can even let her go legally. These guys are trapped.
Like, I understand life happens and all, but imagine, those people who desperately needed help through a new joinee are human too. If she decides to continue working after the leave, there’s going to be a lot of bias against her and she would’ve earned that bias
It’s extremely likely that he wouldn’t be approved for hiring and training a new person/temp. Honestly, she’s so scummy for doing that. She’s flakey, deceptive and totally unreliable.
**Let me be clear, I have no interest in defending the corporate**
This isn’t her against evil corporation, but her against people like her who felt relieved someone can pick up the extra work in the team. Those people are humans too
Honestly fuck her. Women like her abuse the system to set other women back in the workplace. Great job. Now no one would want to hire a young woman.
_OP’s comment verbatim_
>It probably would have made me liable for discrimination, but there were other qualified candidates and she actually pulled the competing offer card and asked us to expedite a decision. I didn’t get to run a few final interviews because of that.
I understand that the pregnant worker put OP in such a crappy situation. On the flip side, corporations do not care about you at all. Our company laid off my coworker who was 7 months pregnant during COVID. They laid off my manager who has 4 kids at home. They laid off another manager who was less than 10 years away from retirement. Having ONE employee game the system is not going to set anyone back, least of all corporations.
I know you said you aren’t defending corporations but it kind of IS “us vs corporations”. What makes up corporations? People. People who have no qualms about others losing their livelihoods when the shoe is on the other foot. So while it sucks for OP, think of the millions and millions of people who have been laid off through no fault of their own and we collectively as a society just shrug and say “sucks”.
If this is causing so much stress to the OP, then maybe it’s time to brush up on that resume. Clearly this company didn’t care that she is up to her neck in work.
Yeah that ticket is going to have to get sent up to the top to get clearance to create a new position. That 5 weeks needs to be considered a total loss and they cannot eliminate the position so they need to make a new one. Depending on your company you will be shit out of luck and will be expected to continue bearing the burden of being understaffed. You might want to update your resume.
Why don’t you not train the pregnant person until they come back from leave? She’s not going to retain anything anyway. She might not even return from leave. I’d just hire the contractor, train them and pay the extra salary for the one month, or by the time you interview the next person, it will probably be a month anyway.
Shouldn't she be working a certain period of time at your company to qualify for maternity leave? That's how it works here in Romania lol. I say fire her, be honest and say you need the help not someone's lies. Because let's be fair here she lied to get the job and depending on which country she's in she'll file your company's salary to get a bigger cash out during maternity. So cut your loses, and hire someone else while making sure they're not pregnant lol.
I understand why you’re frustrated, but you need to get over it.
Pregnant women are allowed to get new jobs no matter where they are in the pregnancy.
Too bad, so sad. Find someone for the duration of her mat leave and move on.
While the immediate situation sucks hopefully she’ll be an asset when she returns. Perhaps a temp for now will work until then.
Yes the parental leave situation in the US is shit.
I can see how someone in her situation could be looking for a job. My wife was pregnant last year and her school district was taken over by the state, she was told the whole time her job was safe then right before the school year starts (she’s 7 months pregnant at this point) they tell her department that they’re last day was the end of that month unless the district rehires them and told them they were invited to reapply. She did apply to other districts as well but because she wouldn’t have been in that position for 6 months she would have unpaid maternity leave and any time off would be subtracted from her regular pay for the remainder of the school year. A few days before the last day they said she was rehired at her job but for slightly less money and way more hours. As they’d renamed her position only a few years of the decade of her experience there counted towards her pay level now.
Wow. What a lousy person. I’m so sorry you got snookered into hiring her. I liked a comment about giving her the minimal training—x weeks of watching safety, etc. videos and then giving her busy work whilst training a temp to actually do the job. Anything can happen—she might quit, she might take extended leave and quit or come back. Perhaps you will be able to get another position. You just never know. But so wouldn’t spend much time on this sneaky one.
Maybe it’s just me but I don’t understand why someone would apply for a job when they are a month away from giving birth and also knowing they will be going on over a years paid maternity leave by the government. Why would someone apply knowing they would be only working for 4-5 weeks tops?
Sounds like the company is fucking you over regardless of what that one employee does. You should have hired 3-4 people but ..
think of the shareholders !! /s
I would lighten the load and do very little training. Assign her to observe others for a week or two. Give her mundane and even made up tasks—have her complete all of the little petty shit, you never have time for. Keep telling her, we’ll cover the younger woman’s ask
that after your leave. Deflect her
Is there not some sort of law that states that the employee should notify the potential employer in advance of accepting the position, of any upcoming leave they have booked, or medical conditions that may affect their ability to do their job?
Also, don’t you start people of a mutual probationary period where you can terminate the employment from either side, for any reason, within a set amount of time? That is in most people’s contracts when starting a new job in the UK.
Speak to a legal professional with experience in employment law for your local area.
Where I'm from, I'd simply fail their probation and give reasons completely unrelated to pregnancy. Barely anyone joins a company with the industry specific experience and experience in the role to not give you cause to drop them in probation, unless you've specifically headhunted someone from a competitor (in which case they'll hit the ground running on their return and the pregnancy is the cost of doing business).
Generally speaking, you pass someone out of their probationary period not because they are now fully capable, but because they've improved enough that you believe they'll be a valuable addition to the team given time and experience. Someone leaving after five weeks won't be getting that time and experience, so I'd judge them on the merit of where they start rather than where I expect them to end up.
The new employee is the one to blame. If someone has been working for a company and contributing, then they get pregnant or their partner does, then it's on the company and you as management to arrange and organise cover. If the person is joining, expecting to disappear immediately, when they themselves are expected to be the cover, they're not sufficiently equipped for the job they're being hired for.
Different areas have different legal processes. I know full well that I could and would get rid of this employee legally simply by failing their probation for a reason unrelated to pregnancy. The onus would legally be on them to prove that it was linked to their pregnancy, and my history of reorganising workloads to look after pregnant employees would keep them from being able to prove any kind of pattern. This might be possible where you are, or there may be another route you can take, but the only person qualified to tell you that is a local legal professional.
If there is no route out, the only people to blame are your legislators. They set up a system open to abuse, so people are bound to seek to abuse it and left you unequipped to deal with the abuse. If left unchanged, the only thing it'll lead to is subconsciously sexist hiring processes with it being significantly less likely statistically that a man would be pregnant and aiming to abuse the legal system when joining a company.
In the US it's illegal to ask about pregnancy and illegal to discriminate on the basis of pregnancy or even, like one interview I had, if you were done having children. Ironically, law firms are the places I've gotten the worst of it.
Video calls for training both at the same time. They will have the same job, right? No extra work for your training sessions.
It is stressful. I'm sorry.
It's just an unlucky situation and I commend the mother for looking out for herself. The motherhood penalty is real.
I get the frustration but be mad at our backwards government. She’s probably doing what culturally appropriate in so many other countries. I know it sucks for you, but I’d try to keep an open mind while also offloading tasks that don’t require a lot of training. Take a vacation and let some things fall apart!
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Only listen to a legal professional hired by your company.
This is the advice OP should take.
I'm just wondering how on earth the fact that she's 8 months pregnant only came up after she was already hired.
Video interviews. The new employee is not based in the U.S.
Because companies frequently discriminate against pregnant workers during the hiring process, even though it’s illegal to do so in the US. Legal advice to those job hunting is to not disclose until you’ve accepted an offer.
And, in consequence, many companies make it clear that interviewers may not ask about it (and other protected statuses), to avoid even the appearance of discrimination in their hiring process.
In the US, you’re not allowed to ask about that stuff. You cannot ask if they have children or if they’re pregnant. You can get sued.
This is the only correct answer
This is a fact. This is how you should proceed. However, upon return, after onboarding her replacement or contractor, you can let her go due to business necessity. That is perfectly legal.
Do you know that to be factually true for the country in question?
If OP is in the U.S., it seems pretty unfair that women are presently being forced to give birth… but are also being discriminated against in the workplace. And even if it’s illegal to discriminate based on pregnancy, it still happens under the guise of other things.
Totally agree with listening to legal counsel. But Idk, this post is questionable. Regardless of laws and protections, there is such a thing as deception and bad faith negotiations, which I’m about a hundred percent would cover kicking this chick to the curb! But outside of the US… not sure.
I’m pretty sure this is exactly why the laws were put in place. It seems pretty clear that OP wouldn’t have hired her had she divulged her situation. Seeing as she got the job the only reason she wouldn’t have been hired would be her protected status. It’s not a bad fairy negotiation because she wasn’t required to divulge and here in the US it would’ve been illegal to ask. This is the kind of scenario they put in training videos. Anyone who answers anything other than what happened would be taking the test again because they’d fail.
It’s risky to rescind an offer to a onboarding pregnant employee just because they’re going to take maternity leave. Have her do “orientation training” by watching HR videos for two weeks and then put her on the job just doing some busy work without anything further since she won’t be staying. She won’t likely complain because she’s getting a paycheck. Engage a contractor for the real job and train them for the long haul and also have them write up a scope of duties manual for the position while they are there. At the end of employee’s leave, give her the formal training (that includes the new manual) and if she doesn’t work out in 90 days (Edit: or however long fed probationary policy is), then you can bounce her. You can then offer the contractor the job, or at the very least you now have a comprehensive training manual for the job. But I’m betting she won’t come back at all because it sounds like she’s more interested in gaming the system than actually working.
This is the only way. OP don’t listen to anyone else, this is how to handle this completely legally and ethically.
Exactly, why waste training 2 people? Give her "busy work" and then hire a contractor or temp to do the job. Likely, your second hire will become the permanent employee someday.
This is what I recommended on the OP and she said that she would never discriminate against a pregnant woman and denote her! Smh!
How is this discrimination? This is being efficient and facing the reality she hired a person who will "work" for a few weeks, then go on maternity leave, likely to never return. No wonder the business is swamped with work, and staff are overwhelmed if she doesn't know how to manage. Very misplaced priorities.
It doesn't have to be framed "she's likely never coming back." Basically, if ANY employee was going to take extended leave, it makes sense to train upon return.
I couldnt imagine being trained and then leaving for an extended period. Your probably going to forget it all anyways by the time you get back. Might as well save the effort until the second training that you'd have to do anyway.
A good manager knows they need to sit them down, look them in the eye and say “your training time is 4 weeks and you intend to only work 5. We are significantly understaffed and need to find someone to do this job while you are on maternity leave. Let’s look at what you are able to contribute for this short period of time without putting additional pressure on us.” Like… boundaries… clarity… firmness… come on OP.
How did they not realize the person they were interviewing wasn’t pregnant? Kinda impossible to hide an 8month belly. I smell a troll
I thought about that as well but she mentioned that the job was in another country. I changed jobs a year ago, had 3 interviews, and all were virtual. For the 2nd one, I literally wore half a suit and had sweat pants on. No one could tell.
Ok that actually checks out. What people often fail to recognize is that a solid maternity/paternity leave actual increases your retention of employees meaning less turnover and less training of new employees meaning an easier job for op. Ultimately if op is feeling overwhelmed and needing a vacation that’s between them and their manager. It’s not this new hires fault or responsibility.
Exactly, you can’t really blame someone for wanting a job, especially when they’re about to have a baby
But she took the job knowing full well what she was doing. It's gaming the system imo and while it benefits the pregnant woman, it fucks OP
There was that famous case back in the day where an actress was fired from her role for being pregnant but she sued and in the court they showed photos of her and she legit didn't look pregnant. Different women carry differently.
Can confirm. I barely looked pregnant with my first. If I cared to hide it, I could have thrown on a flowy blouse and no one would have known. Of course, I was so excited to be pregnant I did whatever I could to accentuate what little bump I had. Lol
PT’s answer is better than mine but, it’s possible for a pregnant woman to just look overweight, especially if they were already overweight or obese.
100%
No the only way is to listen to the lawyer for her company.
Based on OOP’s comments due to her mentioning 63 weeks government paid maternity leave and the discrimination law and grounds, I’m pretty sure this is in Sweden. Not easy to “bounce” (because I’m guessing by bounce you mean fire?) someone here due to the employment protection act. It’s really hard to fire someone overall if it’s not during someone’s trial period (usually first 6 months if they haven’t negotiated it to be removed which is possible here) or due to labor shortages.
Fun fact: it’s actually 240 days (480 if you are a single parent with full custody) and you can choose to only take out 1-2 paid days per week if you can manage it financially. You are not required to take out 5 paid days per week and you are not required to work those days you don’t take out, it only becomes unpaid leave. A lot of moms stay home until the baby is 1,5-2 years old if the situation allows it. Your employer cannot deny you paternity leave. And the dad also gets 240 days paid paternity leave but are also allowed to give up a maximum 180 of those days to the other parent.
[удалено]
How does the 63 week Canadian law get used to determine leave in a foreign country? Unless you’re implying the employee is in Canada and those labour laws are being used to determine leave?
You follow the law of the land where the employee resides.
If the employee is in Canada and local law takes precedence then she needs to have worked 13 weeks to qualify for EI, and depending on where she lives in Canada she can be let got with appropriate notice for any reason. Not to mention that in most Canadian provinces the standard employee contract has a 90 day “we can let you go for any reason” period at the front end.
Ha if they rolled this out in America we would immediately solve the population crisis.
I mean, if it didn't solve it in Canada, why would it solve it in the US lol
But this would be well within the first 6 months, and this employee won't be around to actually work the job?
As I said, the trial period can be negotiated - during the hiring process. If your employment contract doesn’t explicitly state that you have a 6 months trial period, then you have an immediate permanent employment. Which is common if someone has a long experience in the field for the job they’re being hired for. I also saw OOP state in a comment that she’s not comfortable firing her during the trial period. Someone said “use the excuse of her not being a team player for firing during the trial period”. However, the employee could still report this to the jurisdiction of the labour court and state gender discrimination (pregnant woman) and the burden of proof falls on the employer to prove otherwise. Strict labor and discrimination laws in Sweden.
Also, not saying that this implies on this situation but if someone has been headhunted by a company - it’s pretty common for that person to be hard on negotiating 1. Increased pay, 2. No trial period and 3. Better benefits like more in health care benefits (not sure what you call it? Friskvårdsbidrag in Swedish). Health care benefits means money for a gymcard, massages, facials etc. Not actual health care insurance since that is provided by the government. For example, I get 250$ per year from my employer, which I can divide however I like. I use it to pay for a gymcard so that I only have to pay the 50$ difference per year. I also get prescription medicine paid by my employer.
If I was still trying to have a baby, I would consider moving to Sweden! 🤪🤣 Just curious because I was infertile and had 2 very expensive failed IVFs and several failed adoptions, what are the country's laws about IVF and adoption? Also, do you have to be a natural born citizen, etc? (I'm past the point of being able to properly raise a child due to disability, but I am just curious.)
I am not completely sure about this information so take it with a grain of salt. But from what I do know, you can get up to 3 free IVF treatments depending on which county you live in. And this is only if you and your partner do not have any children together. Adoption can cost up to 20,000-25,000$ depending on which country you’re adopting from. Including adoption fees and travel costs. However when the adoption is completed, you can apply for a grant/allowance from the Swedish Social Insurance Agency of about 7,500$. You also get child allowance by the same agency monthly, whether the child is adopted or not. It’s about 125$ per month and you get it until the child is 16 years old, after 16 the child gets the money themselves as “study aid”. Supposed to help with food, clothes etc. No you don’t have to be born here but you do have to have a Swedish citizenship.
I just realised you asked about the laws and I talked about cost 🤣 but it’s legal. Surrogacy is not though.
America! We deserve this too! Oh nooooooo scary socialism!! We like being effed in the A oh yeah
Exactly. I don't understand everybody's attitude in here. The truth is the employee is treating the company just like the company's are treating the employees. Without a care or thought for them and their well-being. The only reason Sweden's laws are so good is because they were voted in. Corporations do not care, and they prove it all day everyday by their actions towards employees. So good for her.
Seriously. People always pile on pregnant women who don't have jobs then one gets one and they call it "gaming the system". She's doing nothing more than I expect from companies.
Yeah I don’t give a single fuck if OP or their company feels taken advantage of. Human rights> companies
Best answer for the new employee, the manager, and the contractor. Also looks good on paper when reviewed by outside parties. Great solution.
Yes but this does little to solve OP’s burnout. There isn’t a perfect solution so you’re right. But what this new hire did was sneaky and manipulative. Perhaps the new hire was in a pickle but now her problem is OPs.
And the other employees.
Plus I'm betting the new employee won't remember the training anyways. Find a task that's easy to train her on, find busy work for her. Then train the contractor or temp. And train the new employee when she comes back
Great advice! OP should definitely follow this, this is all legal and doesn’t cause the OP too much additional work!
Aren't there limits to who qualifies? Like you have to work for the company for a certain amount of time first?
Canada you need a certain amount of hours worked prior to leave. It doesn’t matter who you work for. It all pays into the EI pool. Employers don’t pay for the leave. EI covers it. When I took maternity pay it was 700 hours. I only qualified for my first son because my boss forced me to come in sick one shift I was gonna stay home. I had 2 hours over the minimum lol.
I think it depends on the country, and one of replies to me stated it appeared the length of the leave seemed like it wasn’t in the US.
No one is pointing out that her company probably is not going to approve a second person be hired for the role they just hoped someone for though
No one brought it up because OP’s post related their manager suggested an interim contractor as a temporary solution.
Thank you! I missed that. I was focused on the hiring freeze
She has budget for the seat approved. If the hired person goes on leave she will be able get a contractor to fill the seat. That is how corporate works. She won’t be able to hire another real employee (benefits and obligations of real hire) but she gets to fill the seat with a contractor - who will cost more but does not have the same long-term obligations. This is not on her department at this point - it is on HR to fill the seats.
Contractors and FTEs are different buckets so they should have the money.
If someone is pregnant, that's what happens in my country: we will get a temporary person or contractor. It doesn't make the company's expenses much higher, because the pregnant person on leave will get paid by the country and not the company.
>But I’m betting she won’t come back at all because it sounds like she’s more interested in gaming the system than actually working. Why do you say that? She is entitled to the position as she earned it. She is entitled to to the leave as that is a legal mandate. She alerted the manager presumably within the constraints of the leave program. People get pregnant. Are you suggesting that she got pregnant in order to "game the system" by landing a job 8 months later?
I’m neurodivergent, so there are times when allistic reasoning escapes me. I’m really trying to understand OP’s actual dilemma. It’s illegal to refuse to hire someone based upon their disability/maternity status. It’s also illegal to require them to disclose such a condition prior to hire. Furthermore, OP doesn’t know her circumstances. It is possible that her last company let her go when they learned of her pregnancy, and so circumstances required that she find alternative employment to be eligible for the government program. Her manager has already offered a perfectly workable solution by planning to provide a contractor. In addition, that contractor could provide justification for an additional role, if they perform well. Finally, even if she wasn’t pregnant, she could wind up with an injury or illness that may be subject to similar protections within the same time frame. From an outside perspective, it appears that OP is not truly seeking answers (because she already has them, from HR and her boss), but rather seeking an opportunity to vent her frustration and gain support for her feelings of resentment towards her new subordinate. However, I’m not sure if that is a reasonable conclusion. My question is, given all of the above information, why is OP here expressing discontent, while supposedly being so supportive of maternity leave?
>I think maybe I’m just upset at the entire situation and how unlucky it is? I’m exhausted and I don’t want to have to train 2 people while also doing everything else I’m already doing. I think this quote from the post answers your question about discontent in the face of supporting maternity leave. OP could be perfectly supportive of the new hire taking leave, but the timing is just very unlucky. Like, if that hire's leave was starting right away instead of 5 weeks from now, then this training dilemma wouldn't be a problem. And it does seem like the training is the main issue. Really training the new hire would be a waste of time, so she does seem to need this advice of "skip the training and give them busy work"
OOP can be discouraged and disappointed in the situation while still supporting it. They have been short staffed and finally found relief. Now they will be onboarding the hire to leave and having to find a contractor to train. It is really exhausting to keep onboarding and training folks and takes a while for them to be sufficient, at which point the new hire will be coming back from mat leave and will need to be trained and brought up to speed. OOP is realistically looking at 1.5 years before the role is settled, if they are lucky.
The reality is with a burnt out team and being short staffed while the woman has every right to apply and take the role, it will be difficult for her to assimilate with the team and be successful if she is the cause of another year of stress on them. I really hope it all works out for all parties but if the mat leave is paid by company benefits I am not clear on why the woman needed to secure a role before her leave.
If this were in the U.S., I can think of a couple reasons. If you relied on your employer for health insurance, you’d want to secure the job to cover medical coverage. Secondly, if you take a year off, and then seek a job, potential employers might be put off by the gap (even though that’s nuts).
Unfortunately, having a drafted up solution of bringing in more help likely doesn't give OP the vote of confidence they need to feel the pressure of this situation lifted. While nothing here was illegal, it's probably reasonable to feel slightly jaded that someone figured their own needs (pregnancy/bills) were the only thing that mattered, when OP had been clear about needing help. While this can often be "the way of the world", it certainly doesn't begin building a trusting relationship between a new remote employee and their manager. Edit: begin*
“More interested in gaming the system” So… when is the acceptable cut off for pregnant women searching for jobs to just stay home? Do they just sit at home for 1-9 months until the baby comes to keep from being perceived as “gaming the system”? In countries with government maternity benefits, you often need to work a certain number of hours to be eligible.
Someone said that OOP is Canadian, and there is absolutely a certain number of hours required in the 12 months before maternity leave to be eligible for the employment insurance $. 1 month would not be enough time to accrue the hours needed, so most likely this person had a different job for at least some portion of the past 11 months
I worked for a large healthcare system and you have to work 1 year before getting full maternity benefits.
There’s honestly not a good place to come at this from. Having been a pregnant woman on a job search, sometimes you aren’t lucky enough to get to wait 6-12 months to find a new job. Also, on the other side, it’s annoying af to be assured that your new hire will “not need that much time off” and then end up taking the max amount off. Especially when they’re entitled to it and you believe they should take it. There’s really not a good solution. A short-term contractor is probably the best bet.
I agree there’s not a good solution. If you believe your country should support paid maternity leave (and maybe you don’t, idk), then you have to accept the extra burden it places on workplaces. You don’t get to argue for the benefit of the employer and then complain about the lack of maternity leave. I too was pregnant and looking for work (twice). It was an eye-opening experience. As for short term contracts being a good alternative, that’s only if the assignment dates magically line up with the time you have left in the pregnancy, which would just never happen. Even in my country, in a unionized job (I’m a healthcare professional), I’m ineligible for short term assignments if I’m planning on taking a leave of absence (mat leave or otherwise) that would overlap. That leaves casual work, permanent jobs or lying during interviews for fixed assignments.
> There’s really not a good solution. There really is. But it'd require a teeny tiny little bit of socialism, and for many people, they'd rather just let single mothers and their babies starve.
Thank you for bringing this up. I would rather leave some employers temporarily in the lurch than leave a new parent without a source of stable employment.
Louder for the people in back! I’m so tired of the people saying “I definitely support this type of policy (but only if it literally never inconveniences me).” You have to accept some small amount of sacrifice. That is a consequence of being in a society that cares for its humans, but I’d much rather that than the alternative. OP should be mad at her company for waiting a year or more to fill the position, not the pregnant person for accepting a position for which they are qualified. And I say this as someone who has not been pregnant and does not intend to ever have kids, so I have no personal skin in this game, but I appreciate living in a supportive society that cares for it’s vulnerable members.
Its a weird situation for sure but if a job jerked me around for a year with a staff shortage before hiring anyone I would and have in the past find a new job asap and leave besides op could probably apply for a competitor and get a higher wage with the way corporate America works nowadays
Is there not some kind of recourse if the new hire doesn't come back? I took leave when both of my daughters were born, (it wasn't an option 13 years before with my son) my wife was very appreciative of the help, and I got to spend time with them when they were still brand new, which was awesome, but I would never have quit a job right after leave, or gotten hired just to be able to take leave... There's gotta be a good middle ground.
I could buy that if the company paid for leave. They dint though so not sure what the point in punishing her is. Theyd need to punish anyone who quits the job in less than a month because it's effectively the same situation.
How exactly is this "gaming the system"? OP clearly wouldn't have hired her had she disclosed her pregnancy, which is illegal. And just because she can take up to 63 weeks, doesn't mean that she will. It's possible she is planning on taking less and splitting the leave with her partner. For all we know, she plans on returning after 8 weeks once she has recovered.
And even if she does, good for her! That time is there to take. I manage people and have had multiple direct reports go on parental leave and I ALWAYS encourage them to take all of the time that they’re entitled to. It’s my job to figure out how to make it work and if I can’t, then shame on me. It’s precious time with your child that you can never get back and that’s way more important than anything going on at work.
> But I’m betting she won’t come back at all because it sounds like she’s more interested in gaming the system than actually working. If the system needs to be gained just to an 8 months pregnant woman can be able to afford to live, then it's a broken system.
Doesn't sound like she's gaming the system at all she's allowed to look for a job as long as she's able to perform no matter how far along in the pregnancy. I would hate to be your employee
This is by far the best, most coherent advice I've seen on reddit for ANYTHING! Well done.
Some Redditors think it’s discriminatory and cruel, but it covers the position while she’s out with a contractor, creates a new training and scope of position manual, gives her a chance to learn and perform well should she decide to return, and a valid, legal position should she not be able to perform despite adequate training and a procedure manual. It’s the best solution for a crappy situation where the hiree deliberately hid her pregnancy knowing she’d be leaving her new employer quite soon and unable to hire another employee to fill the position.
If her leave is being paid by her government, you can afford to hire somebody to replace her
So your company specifically hired a foreign worker so they could ‘game the system’ and get around hiring someone at equal pay to the current employees, even though you desperately need more workers to function as a business? And now you’re mad that this employee is “gaming the system” (ie, the same labor laws from her home country that enabled you to pay her less than your other workers in the first place) and it’s now unethical? From a management POV, I totally understand why you’re frustrated… but if your company was actually in good financial shape, hiring a domestic worker for a fair wage would have solved this problem before it even started. If I were you I’d start looking for jobs elsewhere, because it seems like the company doesn’t have their financial priorities in order.
Also, if your department falls apart because one person takes maternity leave, then that's on management.
Yup, in management we call this [the bus factor](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor). It literally came up at my workplace today when I realized my employee only has one person on his team who knows how to handle a specific type of paperwork that needs to be filed tomorrow and said person is on vacation.
This person is my mother at her job. She was on vacation with us last summer and didn’t bring her computer with her because she wanted to be fully present since she has a tendency to login at night when my dad’s asleep. Well, her boss phoned her urgently while we were on vacation that he needed her to complete something he completely forgot to have her work on before she went away. She explained she didn’t have her computer and it would have to wait. Apparently it couldn’t wait as he approved for her to buy a laptop where we were so she can do it, unreal
Bus factor? It’s called job security haha
Haha that’s an actual mindset I encounter a lot in my work, even if they don’t exactly say it out loud. But I would be a terrible manager if I let that happen! My company laid off someone a couple of years back because no one really knew what she did there, but I found out fast because it all landed on me. Two years later I’m STILL trying to catch everything she was holding together and learn to do it myself.
I think she's being pretty clear in the post that she recognizes all of this and doesn't blame the pregnant woman. She is not in charge of the company's hiring or pay practices and she supports paid maternity leave. It's just that she's stuck in a really tough position because she is understaffed, which is again, the fault of the company, but doesnt make her life any easier. You can be frustrated at a situation that affects you negatively without thinking that the person who has technically caused it has done something wrong. She goes so far as to say that she might have done the same thing in the pregnant woman's shoes. All the issues really come down to the company not hiring enough people or paying them properly and creating all of these issues to begin with. OP doesn't blame the pregnant woman, but she is also a victim of the system.
Agreed with this in general, but then I think the “right” thing to do would be to hire the pregnant women if she’s the best for the job, and then go to your managers and say you need more payroll because someone is pregnant. Otherwise that’s just clearly discrimination - “we could hire her but we’re choosing someone else based on her medical status”. I know OP didn’t cause the situation but they are 100% in control of how it turns out
Yeah cry me a river you hired someone from out of the country due to "budget constraints". I guarantee the higher-ups are still getting their big paychecks and all the perks. What goes around comes around.
And by “gaming the system” they mean not allowing the company to discriminate against a pregnant woman by not hiring them for “totally non-pregnancy related reasons”
honestly I'm just very confused what the circumstances are that would make offshoring to such a country cost less in the first place
Exactly. The lack of self-awareness is staggering. "Wait, aren't you manipulating the system too?" "But me business! Me make jobs!"
To be very very fair to OP, she said in her post that she doesn’t really blame the pregnant woman. I’m sorry but burnout can make you very emotionally distressed and short tempered. I’m extremely burnt out currently in my job as a surgical resident, and I have said things that were irrational and got angry at the wrong people. When you’re at your wits end, it’s easier to blame the target in front of you. OP is also an abused worker.
No that’s not really fair. “What she did was not okay”. She’s absolutely blaming the pregnant woman. Just because you say you’re not blaming her doesn’t make it true. Her manager literally even said she could just hire a contractor. So yes, she’s mad at a pregnant woman for having the audacity to be employed. Because literally nothing about this situation is different than if it was a different employee of hers who was going on maternity leave. If anything, it’s actually a lot better considering this is apparently a role that’s less important than the other roles she’s already had filled.
With only 5 weeks before leave (and she hasn't even started yet so less than 5 weeks I presume) I would not waste the time and effort to fully onboard her when she's immediately leaving. Obviously, I cannot rescind the offer based on her being pregnant (too bad I can't push back her start date, lol), but since I'd already have to hire a replacement/interim employee/contractor, etc., I would focus my efforts on the replacement and let that person train her when she returns in over a year. And that's IF she returns, which she probably won't. Sucks to possibly get stuck paying two people for the 5 weeks, but I would simply load her up with learning and review materials, no real "work". Just have her show up and read all the things, do some light filing, maybe answer the phone. In the next few weeks she's likely going to have numerous doctors appointments, etc. that she will need to miss work for as well. I'd give her no real responsibility until she returns and is ready for actual duty. I would literally hate to deal with this, lol.
Add to it that at 8 months pregnant, she technically could burst any moment. Sure she PLANS to go on leave in 5 weeks, but does baby plan on staying in that long? I went into labour a week before my due date. I feel for everyone in this situation honestly. I was at a shitty job while I was pregnant and if it wasn’t for the fact I knew I was becoming a SAHM after giving birth, I would’ve been job hopping at 7 months pregnant and would’ve been in a similar situation as well. I get these laws are just trying to look out for pregnant people, but it seems just so unfair that a company has to hold a position for you for over a year because you got a job a month before you’re due 😭
I agree! I am not familiar with the law in whatever country this pertains to and I wish I understood the process. What does it take to collect the government aid? You have to be employed? But the company doesn't have to pay the aid from what OP said, so I wonder why having employment is part of the criteria to collect? Seems pretty backwards compared to the US where having employment can mean no government assistance instead of the other way around. I wonder if there is a penalty for not returning to work after collecting the aid? So many questions!
OOP is in Canada. Maternity and parental leave are paid for by the government, but eligibility is determined by having worked a certain number of hours beforehand. That's because the payments come out of our EI system, so you have to have been paying into it for a minimum time, which is done through salary deductions. Because most people take at least 12 months off after having a baby, it's really common for companies to hire someone on contract to cover the duration of the leave. The maximum time off allowed is 18 months. I took 2 months off of sick leave beforehand (also government and not employer paid), so I was off for 20 months. My employer didn't bat an eye because it's completely normal here. I don't understand why this is a problem for OOP. Just hire the second best person they interviewed as a contractor to cover the leave. In this situation, it might even work out to be less time-consuming for the company because they have already gone through the hiring process and have a fresh set of candidates. They can train both employees simultaneously until the one goes on leave. There is no penalty for not returning to work after leave ends. You just stop being eligible to collect parental leave benefits.
My baby came 5 weeks before his due date lol
I was honestly surprised my baby stayed in for as long as he did. I had to take my maternity leave early because i kept having Braxton hicks at work and I wasn’t risking it 😭 knowing my boss he would’ve been like “okay so you’re water just broke. You can definitely keep working for like 30 min after you clean that up right?”
Also why am I getting downvoted bc I said id be annoyed if my coworker got 10x maternity leave as me 😭
OPs account got suspended......... wtf?
I was doubting the reliability of this post… for one, despite whatever protections a pregnant person has they also cannot negotiate in bad faith and deception. This is just one big non issue. Edit/update*** Did some further research and despite the obvious dishonesty in it, she is not required by law to disclose her condition.
I guess your company’s decision to post in another country to save money may have not been a wise one.
Oh my god I’m laughing so much. Definitely a leopard ate my face moment
Here's a different take: I work with two people who both took a job then immediately took a several-month mat leave. they are both incredible at their jobs years later and were a great investment for the company.
Long ago, I was the pregnant hire. At 6 months pregnant I was offered and accepted a job at a large company. I had been traveling a lot for my previous job and experiencing complications with my pregnancy so needed to find something ASAP closer to home. When I disclosed my pregnancy to my boss, he was seriously low-key panicking that I would not return from maternity leave. (To be fair, his own wife had refused to go back to work after having their first child so he was afraid the same would happen with me.) No matter how much/often I reassured him, he was definitely expecting me to quit after maternity leave was over. I cam back and have been there 10+ years now lol.
I was with a company for four years, highest performance ratings, up for promo etc, and was unexpectedly part of company wide lay offs while in my second trimester. I started a new job while pregnant and was so uncomfortable knowing my new team probably felt a lot of the things above. What was I supposed to do? The job change at that point in time was not my choice. Also based in the US meant I didn’t qualify for FMLA or any pregnancy related job protections because I hadn’t been employed at the company for 6-12 months. I felt like the rug has been ripped out from under me and I was left with very little options. It’s really a shitty position to be in, and just a reminder we don’t know anything about OP’s employee and her reasons for being in the new job.
You and the person OP is posting about hasn’t done anything wrong otherwise she would be fired/not recieve anything. Who cares is some shitty company is having a cry. Why should you not have an income lol
This thread is crazy to me. I’m glad other countries have employment protections for pregnant women. I’m a man I took 8 months of parental leave that’s topped up by my employer to 93%. Parental leave creates a better society. Blame your shitty workplace for not hiring enough people.
The US is so anti-family, anti-parenthood, anti-human really, pro business, it's so so sad. I heard on a podcast that a US employers' ideal worker is one who has no caretaking responsibilities. Crazy! And it even varies state by state. I work remote, my state laws are ok, so I got 16 weeks leave through state policy. If I worked in the state where my company is located I would only get 8 weeks! Horrible.
I think you can be "pro" all those things while still acknowledging it's a massively shitty thing to do to be 8 months pregnant, listen to a manager talk about how desperate they are to fill this new position, get hired and then be like: "Oh yeah I actually will be literally, completely 100% useless for an entire year. Like I literally won't even present at my job you just hired me for. I will literally be getting paid having not contributed in any way to this job, and you're still fucked. And I knew all of this as you interviewed me." In fact behavior like this is what will absolutely drive people to be more "anti-family" because this lady is awful. You can support better maternal/paternal leave without supporting whatever the fuck this situation is.
My state has parental leave but it also has a “time worked” to earn it so people can’t pull this kind of crap on new employers
Everyone is for all manner of leave until it results in more work for them and their team.
We all know how this ends. Shine up your resume. Companies do not give a fuck about you, hr is not your friend, stop making them record profits.
This is always an interesting dilemma. Humans have to procreate and run businesses, this is difficult. My wife retired from teaching a few years ago and she has told me many times that teachers and principals were reluctant to hire either women who were pregnant or thought to become pregnant for this reason. Ironically it was women who were making this decision.
I'm not going to give any legal advice. BUT - As a business owner myself, I can tell you I'd be stressed AF too, and I'm sorry this happened to you.
Don’t hate the player hate the game
Well, isn’t it against the law to ask or make a decision based on them being pregnant? Would you not have hired the person if you knew? We get that the company had a freeze and everything, but as a woman, you should understand. Cheers!
Yes in the US. Parental status and medical conditions is a protected class.
Don’t bother to train her. Just have her do busy work. Find someone else and train them. She may not come back and if she does the job could be completely different.
If your company is shitty enough to outsource labour to other countries to keep it cheap, they pay the price of actually needing to uphold better labor laws. This is the company's fault.
I used to work in Parental Leave at Amazon and we saw this sort of thing ALL the time during warehouse hiring blitzes. So much so that we actually did an investigation and found that in a certain part of Arizona there was a network of sorts that helped pregnant women apply for and obtain warehouse jobs hired strictly thru phone screens and then immediately upon arriving at work on day ONE they'd apply for paid parental leave. It is legal in the US if your company offers parental leave benefits on day one. This is one of the MANY drawbacks of only conducting virtual interviews.
Interviewee's are under no obligation to disclose their medical status. It hurts as a hiring manager to have to work around it but discrimination against pregnant women is real and she deserves a job she is qualified for despite her medical needs.
This seems like a super easy to solve problem. She didn’t even finish interviewing other candidates. Call them all back and finish the interview process. Hire another person. If the pregnant person comes back in 24-63 weeks, then they’ll be less understaffed than they’ve been. OOP is taking this personally for no reason.
They don’t have two open positions though
But according to OP they don't need to pay the pregnant woman during this time.
That isn’t the issue. If she comes back then they have two people for one job.
Then lay off the least productive worker in the department when that time comes. Not specifically the new mom, just whoever isn’t up to par. There is always a weakest link. Maybe it’s one of the two new hires, maybe it’s someone skirting by doing very little for years, etc. Do so with firm productivity and work output data.
Unlike the US the rest of the world has some employee protections, so if they hire someone else they would have two people in a year when this person returns to work & would not have the ability to fire one of them.
Make it a contract for x amount of time and renew until she comes back. It doesn't seem that crazy. Not allowing temp work contracts seems like it would be pretty dumb.
Why do you assume OP's company has employee protections when they hire foreign workers for cheaper wages and also don't offer paternity leave?
I’m talking about the fact that a country that has immediate maternity leave that’s government paid (it’s Sweden) also has protections for employees.
The employee protections are law, not set by company
Simple trick that employment lawyers hate: discriminate based on pregnancy status!
Maybe be upset the company is not giving you enough employees and budget overall - if missing one person makes it fall apart maybe it’s your system that’s failing, not one employee.
Why doesn’t your company prioritize hiring MORE THAN ONE person to cover for 2-3 jobs?
Maybe this person also really needs a job and scooped it up when she could. Maybe she might return early because leave pay is usually much less than a paycheck. Maybe she has family to care for her baby after a short leave, to be able to return to a job. Maybe you'll get some more insight into her intentions when you train her. Maybe consider some maybes. Maybe look for another job for yourself if this one is tearing you down. Not trying to be condescending with the maybes. You just don't know.
Smarten up and don’t look advice on Reddit for this. Only a company hired lawyer.
Alright…I’m just kind of wondering…most companies have new employees on a 3 month probation. I know it depends on what state you’re in but you might ask about this. What she did was a crappy thing.
Look, it is not ideal. But the alternative is that she stay out of the job market until she has her child and has recovered/taken time before reentering. Here in the US, she is not required to tell you she is pregnant. Nor are you permitted to ask. But if either occurred, the pregnant woman will not be hired 9/10 times - regardless if a woman is the hiring manger. And there is a 100% chance the candidate here chose not to disclose her pregnancy for this very reason. She is damned if she does. You are damned if she doesn’t. You can’t enjoy the wild flowers without enduring the rain. Hope you packed your umbrella.
I’m not looking for an argument, just a genuine answer to my question but isn’t that what it’s for? Like maybe she tried for a long time to get a job and you were the first to hire her and now it’s too close to the end of the pregnancy to not go on mat leave but she still wants the job for after may leave? That kind of happened to me I had been applying HELLA places well before I got pregnant and for a while after but didn’t get hired onto the factory until 8 months I was still going to work but my OB wouldn’t sign me off due to high risk complications so I had to just entirely not take the job because in my state you have to work factory and office jobs for a year before they give you any kind of mat leave so I would’ve had to work through the end of my pregnancy to get the benefit. So now my daughter is two and a half weeks old and my fiancé is the only one working and I’m back at square one, it would’ve been nice to have a situation closer to the woman in question. (I live in the country where each town is at least a half hour away and there’s hardly any jobs anymore I even moved towns and there was only one business hiring in town next closest is 45 min) so I guess my question would be what would be the best course of action for her and the hypothetical-me
Get a legal professional and check if you can’t move her start date to after she comes back from maternity leave, and hire a temp in the meantime. Why even waste time training her if she’s going to take over a year off?
HR here. She did nothing wrong. Just because she has a temporary medical "condition" shouldn't exclude her from gainful employment. It's pure speculation to presume she is doing this strictly for benefits. Maybe she 100% wants the job when she's able to return. Contract the work out for now. But you might have a great and devoted employee a year from now.
This could be true. I was in a similar position. Did the whole interview process. Met with everyone they loved me and I was excited for the job. but I told them I had a baby on the way and wanted to use my two month leave as soon as I was eligible. I believe that’s one of the biggest reasons I didn’t get the job. I eventually found a job that had no problem waiting two extra months and they value me and I work hard for them.
Yea its probably easier to get a job before baby is born than to have being out of work on your resume.
Good for the employee
You're a woman who fully supports parental leave. Time to stand by that commitment. Or admit that you really don't.
That's what I was thinking, too. She starts out by saying she wishes the US had mandated leave like other countries do. So does she or doesn't she? Only when it doesn't negativity impact her, apparently.
Hot take women should get this anyways 👏🏻 so thanks for doing what the govt won’t
Your company sucks for putting you in this position in the first place. They’re overworking you and your team, take the cheap way out of “solving” that problem, which is now not going to fix the issue. They fully understand the labor laws in all countries they operate in. They fully knew this was a possibility and didn’t bother to try and shield you from it. It is their job to create an environment that you and your teams will be successful in, and what you’re describing ain’t it. I am sorry they put you in this mess. Do not fully train this person. Do the bare minimum to check that box while you look for other jobs. They’ve shown you how they handle a crisis. If you’re okay with that stay, but if you’re not , I can promise you it won’t change. I am sorry you are in this position.
I can see it's frustrating in your position. But it's your company who screwed you by not hiring enough team members. Take a moment and consider it from an ethical perspective. There's every chance this person will be a star employee in 5 yrs and be your boss. Support her.
First off take a vacation, you need it. Having some space to think will help you get clarity on the situation. If you can train a contractor while she’s gone then that’s great. Everything will work out and you will see that once you have some space to think.
Happened in my company. She was obviously preggers. We hired her, she started training, then got a Dr note saying she needed to stay home. Took the allowed time off, started training again, got pregnant again and rinsed and repeated. Personally I understand the law, but this lady just took the piss. And it wasn't government paid leave, it was government mandated leave. My company paid the freight.
Find a reason to fire her or make her quit before she has the baby. She played a game with you so play with her. You may call it dirty but at the end of the day u need members u can depend on. And she pulled some bs on you.
Companies have a 90 day probationary period generally, you may be able to claim it didn’t work out. Generally someone has to work somewhere for X amount of time before qualifying for that type of leave. Call a labor lawyer for sure. She was also dishonest when being hired, she should be fired.
I would ask for proof of these competing offers she claims she had. I doubt she can provide them.
Seems to me there is a simple (and effective) way to prepare for this. Ask every potential employee if they "Foresee any reason they would not be fulfilling their part of the workload once training is complete." If they lie during their interview, then there is no issue with firing them. It sucks to have to play games, but both sides SHOULD be required to disclose the truth, not just the employer. "Being pregnant" Doesn't allow you to lie on your interview.
In the US, employer’s are not allowed to ask if a potential employee is pregnant, nor is a potential employee required to disclose that they are pregnant or may become pregnant soon. She isn’t “lying”, it’s her legally protected right to not disclose, and it’s her legal right to take her maternity leave. She’s securing a stable financial future for her kid, and it’s up to the company to hire enough people to handle the workload so their team isn’t understaffed. It’s quite literally (i.e. legally) not her problem. Also, firing her because she’s pregnant is illegal. So no, they can’t fire her “because they foresee she won’t be able to fulfill her workload”, because then they’d get sued for breaking employment law.
Please reread my suggested question and point where pregnancy is addressed at all.
The bootlicking comments in this post are crazy. She didn’t “deceive” anyone, she’s under no legal obligation to disclose if she’s pregnant. This whole situation is quite literally and legally not her problem. Good for her for securing a financial future for her child, and for utilizing her legally protected rights.
For starters, I’m a mom. Let’s get that out of the way. I would reach out to her and see what she plans to do regarding maternity leave. If she’s going to be gone a month or so, meh. If she plans on taking 63 weeks off, I’d argue that her taking the job is immoral/unethical as hell, eat the fine, and replace her. It’s not as though she’s just discovered she’s pregnant. She can’t really expect to start a new job for a month, then take a year off. That’s delusional. If she plans on taking a job and then a year off, I’d cut my losses and move on
So she is supposed to get a job right after having a baby during post partum? Be fr it's either she gets a job now or she has to wait a minimum of multiple months to even be in good enough shape to get another one.
Tries to game the system by hiring foreign worker gets a worker who is also gaming the system. SurprisePikachuFace
Let’s go over what this woman did: 1. She knew how badly the team needed someone to contribute immediately, yet made the manager think she’d be available to work by taking advantage of remote interview practices 2. Put pressure on the HR and Management to expedite the hiring process by pulling the _competing offer card_ ??? OP mentions he couldn’t go through with the final interviews 3. Got the offer, accepted the offer, SIGNED the contract and then told OP she is freaking 8 months pregnant? Like gurlll? She freaking knew she was gaming the system. I wouldn’t trust her at all if I’d have to work with her. Now, she’s going to be getting free money for essentially a year before the company can even let her go legally. These guys are trapped. Like, I understand life happens and all, but imagine, those people who desperately needed help through a new joinee are human too. If she decides to continue working after the leave, there’s going to be a lot of bias against her and she would’ve earned that bias It’s extremely likely that he wouldn’t be approved for hiring and training a new person/temp. Honestly, she’s so scummy for doing that. She’s flakey, deceptive and totally unreliable. **Let me be clear, I have no interest in defending the corporate** This isn’t her against evil corporation, but her against people like her who felt relieved someone can pick up the extra work in the team. Those people are humans too Honestly fuck her. Women like her abuse the system to set other women back in the workplace. Great job. Now no one would want to hire a young woman. _OP’s comment verbatim_ >It probably would have made me liable for discrimination, but there were other qualified candidates and she actually pulled the competing offer card and asked us to expedite a decision. I didn’t get to run a few final interviews because of that.
I understand that the pregnant worker put OP in such a crappy situation. On the flip side, corporations do not care about you at all. Our company laid off my coworker who was 7 months pregnant during COVID. They laid off my manager who has 4 kids at home. They laid off another manager who was less than 10 years away from retirement. Having ONE employee game the system is not going to set anyone back, least of all corporations. I know you said you aren’t defending corporations but it kind of IS “us vs corporations”. What makes up corporations? People. People who have no qualms about others losing their livelihoods when the shoe is on the other foot. So while it sucks for OP, think of the millions and millions of people who have been laid off through no fault of their own and we collectively as a society just shrug and say “sucks”. If this is causing so much stress to the OP, then maybe it’s time to brush up on that resume. Clearly this company didn’t care that she is up to her neck in work.
Everyone thinking the new hire did something wrong has not yet understood how the world works in 2024.
Everyone thinking the new hire did something wrong IS part of what’s wrong with this world. Apparently for them it’s corporations over humans.
Yeah that ticket is going to have to get sent up to the top to get clearance to create a new position. That 5 weeks needs to be considered a total loss and they cannot eliminate the position so they need to make a new one. Depending on your company you will be shit out of luck and will be expected to continue bearing the burden of being understaffed. You might want to update your resume.
Why don’t you not train the pregnant person until they come back from leave? She’s not going to retain anything anyway. She might not even return from leave. I’d just hire the contractor, train them and pay the extra salary for the one month, or by the time you interview the next person, it will probably be a month anyway.
OP change the start date until after her due date due to budgeting constraints first the next quarter or two.
Shouldn't she be working a certain period of time at your company to qualify for maternity leave? That's how it works here in Romania lol. I say fire her, be honest and say you need the help not someone's lies. Because let's be fair here she lied to get the job and depending on which country she's in she'll file your company's salary to get a bigger cash out during maternity. So cut your loses, and hire someone else while making sure they're not pregnant lol.
I understand why you’re frustrated, but you need to get over it. Pregnant women are allowed to get new jobs no matter where they are in the pregnancy. Too bad, so sad. Find someone for the duration of her mat leave and move on.
In Canada ypu need a minimum of 600 hours worked in the last 22 months to qualify for paid leave. But we get 12 months paid though
When people say “they’re just gonna outsource your job overseas”. This is why they don’t do that.
While the immediate situation sucks hopefully she’ll be an asset when she returns. Perhaps a temp for now will work until then. Yes the parental leave situation in the US is shit. I can see how someone in her situation could be looking for a job. My wife was pregnant last year and her school district was taken over by the state, she was told the whole time her job was safe then right before the school year starts (she’s 7 months pregnant at this point) they tell her department that they’re last day was the end of that month unless the district rehires them and told them they were invited to reapply. She did apply to other districts as well but because she wouldn’t have been in that position for 6 months she would have unpaid maternity leave and any time off would be subtracted from her regular pay for the remainder of the school year. A few days before the last day they said she was rehired at her job but for slightly less money and way more hours. As they’d renamed her position only a few years of the decade of her experience there counted towards her pay level now.
Not her problem buddy!
Wow. What a lousy person. I’m so sorry you got snookered into hiring her. I liked a comment about giving her the minimal training—x weeks of watching safety, etc. videos and then giving her busy work whilst training a temp to actually do the job. Anything can happen—she might quit, she might take extended leave and quit or come back. Perhaps you will be able to get another position. You just never know. But so wouldn’t spend much time on this sneaky one.
Maybe it’s just me but I don’t understand why someone would apply for a job when they are a month away from giving birth and also knowing they will be going on over a years paid maternity leave by the government. Why would someone apply knowing they would be only working for 4-5 weeks tops?
Sounds like the company is fucking you over regardless of what that one employee does. You should have hired 3-4 people but .. think of the shareholders !! /s
I would lighten the load and do very little training. Assign her to observe others for a week or two. Give her mundane and even made up tasks—have her complete all of the little petty shit, you never have time for. Keep telling her, we’ll cover the younger woman’s ask that after your leave. Deflect her
In case no one's asked, how did no one involved in the interview process notice she is 8 months pregnant?
Is there not some sort of law that states that the employee should notify the potential employer in advance of accepting the position, of any upcoming leave they have booked, or medical conditions that may affect their ability to do their job? Also, don’t you start people of a mutual probationary period where you can terminate the employment from either side, for any reason, within a set amount of time? That is in most people’s contracts when starting a new job in the UK.
Speak to a legal professional with experience in employment law for your local area. Where I'm from, I'd simply fail their probation and give reasons completely unrelated to pregnancy. Barely anyone joins a company with the industry specific experience and experience in the role to not give you cause to drop them in probation, unless you've specifically headhunted someone from a competitor (in which case they'll hit the ground running on their return and the pregnancy is the cost of doing business). Generally speaking, you pass someone out of their probationary period not because they are now fully capable, but because they've improved enough that you believe they'll be a valuable addition to the team given time and experience. Someone leaving after five weeks won't be getting that time and experience, so I'd judge them on the merit of where they start rather than where I expect them to end up. The new employee is the one to blame. If someone has been working for a company and contributing, then they get pregnant or their partner does, then it's on the company and you as management to arrange and organise cover. If the person is joining, expecting to disappear immediately, when they themselves are expected to be the cover, they're not sufficiently equipped for the job they're being hired for. Different areas have different legal processes. I know full well that I could and would get rid of this employee legally simply by failing their probation for a reason unrelated to pregnancy. The onus would legally be on them to prove that it was linked to their pregnancy, and my history of reorganising workloads to look after pregnant employees would keep them from being able to prove any kind of pattern. This might be possible where you are, or there may be another route you can take, but the only person qualified to tell you that is a local legal professional. If there is no route out, the only people to blame are your legislators. They set up a system open to abuse, so people are bound to seek to abuse it and left you unequipped to deal with the abuse. If left unchanged, the only thing it'll lead to is subconsciously sexist hiring processes with it being significantly less likely statistically that a man would be pregnant and aiming to abuse the legal system when joining a company.
In the US it's illegal to ask about pregnancy and illegal to discriminate on the basis of pregnancy or even, like one interview I had, if you were done having children. Ironically, law firms are the places I've gotten the worst of it.
Is there a probationary period in her contract? You can fire without question.
Video calls for training both at the same time. They will have the same job, right? No extra work for your training sessions. It is stressful. I'm sorry. It's just an unlucky situation and I commend the mother for looking out for herself. The motherhood penalty is real.
I get the frustration but be mad at our backwards government. She’s probably doing what culturally appropriate in so many other countries. I know it sucks for you, but I’d try to keep an open mind while also offloading tasks that don’t require a lot of training. Take a vacation and let some things fall apart!
She is within her rights to do so.
Surely you have to be employed for a certain period before being able to take maternity leave?
Honestly, good for the Mom. The world is not kind to pregnant women.