On July 8, this remarkable report commented on the new guidance the EEOC published regarding pregnant employees. As reported, apparently the EEOC’s tome is voluminous and can easily be reduced to this remarkable statement:
If an employee has a pregnancy-related impairment that hinders his or her ability to perform a job, the employer must attempt to see if it can provide a reasonable accommodation that would allow the employee to continue to perform his or her job.
If you don’t see anything wrong with that statement you may be in need of a vacation.
As far as your correspondent knows, the drive for equality has so far failed to render motherhood the domain of men. Obviously, running afoul of the EEOC’s guidance regarding pregnant women will jeopardize your company’s well being and the advice regarding women contained in the article is sound.
However, as the sentence above indicates, the obsession with equality and its relentless conditioning has created such an unthinking reflex that intelligent writers parrot, and editors overlook, such a comedic faux pas.
Time for a checkup from the neck up?
NOTE: on July 9 BOLT emailed the publisher of HR Morning about the above sentence. Hopefully by the time you read this it has been corrected.