Alex Berke Quoted in New York Times Article on the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act

We first started hearing the term “pod” a couple weeks after lockdown began. Initially, it was something to describe a collection of immediate family or friends with whom we could safely interact. At the same time, people started using the term to refer to extended child care units. Parents began banding together to pool child care resources when daycare facilities closed, schools shut down, and the domestic care industry was no longer an option.

This week, we’re going to spotlight one of the hot button issues at the intersection of employment and pandemic: how parents are going to cope in a fall without schools.

Since we started this weekly blog post in May, we've read and summarized over 50 complaints filed under the new leave law. As we’ve pointed out, many of these complaints follow almost a template, with workers being terminated for either taking legally-allowed precautions to protect fellow workers from potential infection or for having legitimate reasons to take leave, often to care for a family member or child.