UPDATE: Pregnant NJ cop asks for desk duty

This is the story from New Jersey, where a police department refused to give a pregnant policewoman desk duty until she went on maternity leave. (At this point, she's about two months along.) Now? The chief has changed his mind and is giving the officer an administrative post until she has the baby.

Hat Tip: Many thanks, JUNGLE JIM!

Comments

[blarnelology]

The Chief is a wuss, he buckled under the pressure of public opinion. this just shows that if you whine loud enough and often enough you will eventually get your way.

[Wisdom]

This will open the door for many others like her in other jobs. How unfortunate.

It is not right to provide work other than what you were hired for to compensate for something that causes you physical limitations and was not work related.

What if a weekend warrior broke a leg? Is the employer responsible to provide work until healed?

This opens the door for those types of law suits now.

[winkyb2me]

Actually the New Jersey legislature already introduced a bill requiring municipalities to formulate light duty policies for officers who temporarily cannot perform their usual duties for whatever reason (yes, including pregnancy). I'm not sure where that bill is in the process right now, though. Also, the New Jersey Supreme Court has already decided (4 to 3) that if an employer offers a light duty option to ANY employee for ANY reason, then that employer must treat pregnancy similarly. Therefore, if this police department gives light duty to officers for any other reason, they must accomodate pregnancy similarly or be in violation of New Jersey law. Chances are, the City attorney advised the Police Chief of such, in which case, he isn't bowing to public pressure, he's simply following state law.

[blarnelology]

Winky, well since the bill is just a bill and nothing more it doesn't matter. Do you have a link to this new Jersey Supreme court decision? I would like to read it.

Till then the Chief is weak and bowed to public pressure over something he should not have.

[blarnelology]

Here is a blurb from the story. Seems to me like the chief was right to begin with but as I already said, buckled from public pressure.

"Under department policy established in the mid-1990s, he said, officers may be transferred to light- duty assignments only if they are trained for them. Amodio said he asked Henriques if she had training as a dispatcher, a post for which there was an opening. She replied that she did not, he said.

"In the absence of department policy, there wasn't much leeway," he said. "