Labour Pains for Maternity Company

A maternity clothing store has agreed to settle a lawsuit alleging employment discrimination against applicants and employees who claim they were not hired or were terminated because they are pregnant.  Mothers Work, Inc., a Philadelphia-based retailer with 1,500 stores throughout the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico and which operates under the names of Motherhood Maternity, Mimi Maternity, A Pea in a Pod and Destination Maternity, will pay $US375,000 to settle the federal lawsuit.

According to the lawsuit, a Motherhood Maternity store in Florida refused to hire qualified applicants because they were pregnant, and then fired an assistant manager who complained about it.  According to the suit, the assistant manager noticed a pattern of discrimination in October 2003 and complained.  She later was fired after her boss told her that she believed she was pregnant.

"It is shocking that a corporation whose market is pregnant women would refuse to employ them and then retaliate against a woman who complained," Nora Curtin, supervisory trial attorney of the Miami District office of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, said in a statement.\

"This is horrifying to me," said company president Rebecca Matthias, who founded Mothers Work in 1982 when she was pregnant. "My whole world is about servicing pregnant women."

The company settled the lawsuit last week to avoid litigation costs, Matthias said.

—Source: Miami Herald