Ever since the #MeToo movement erupted 18 months ago, considerable attention has been paid to the prevalence of sex discrimination in the workplace, as women complained about being underpaid, overlooked for promotion or subjected to rude, sexist comments by bosses and coworkers just because they tried to ‘have it all’ by juggling a family and a demanding career.
On Wall Street, stories like these have become so commonplace that details can muddle to the point of becoming indistinguishable.
But it’s not every day you read a story about a young father winning a major settlement in a parental-leave discrimination claim.
On Thursday, JP Morgan tentatively agreed to pay $5 million to settle a class action lawsuit claiming the bank discriminated against fathers by denying them adequate family leave.
The lawsuit stemmed from a complaint filed two years ago by Derek Rotondo, an employee in the bank’s Colombus, Ohio, office. It was elevated to class action status after the ACLU got involved.
Now, the bank is going to distribute the money to fathers who were denied the bank’s four-month leave for ‘primary’ caregivers and, as part of the settlement, it has agreed to ensure that its parental leave policies are administered in a gender-neutral way.
According to the New York Times, if the settlement is approved by a judge, it will be the first – and largest – successful class-action suit brought by employees alleging discrimination in a company’s family leave policies.
Here’s some background on Rotondo’s case, courtesy of WSJ:
Derek Rotondo, who works as a fraud investigator in the bank’s office in Columbus, Ohio, filed a charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission arguing that, by designating biological mothers as the default primary caregivers, J.P. Morgan’s parental leave policy violates federal and state laws that prohibit employers from discriminating against employees based on gender or gender-based stereotypes. He was joined in his charge by the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Ohio.
After his son was born in 2017, Rotondo filed to take the full four months of leave. But the bank denied him on the basis that Rotondo’s wife was a special-education teacher who was on summer break at the time of the birth. When it denied his application, the bank told Rotondo that it considered birth mothers primary caregivers by default.
Shortly before Rotondo filed his complaint, the bank expanded its leave policy for primary caregivers from 12 weeks to 16 weeks. Earlier this year, JPM CEO Jamie Dimon said the bank had expanded its leave for secondary caregivers from two weeks to six weeks.
But Rotondo’s lawyers say this distinction is a problem, because it reinforces stereotypes that “our society has artificially set.”
It’d be easier and simpler if corporations offered the same amount of leave to both parents, instead of relying on distinctions like “primary” and “non-primary” caregivers.
“You can’t achieve full equality for women in the workplace unless and until men are taking on a more active role at home,” said Galen Sherwin, one of Mr. Rotondo’s lawyers and an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Women’s Rights Project.
In the US, only 15% of private-sector workers have access to paid family leave, mostly in highly paid white collar professions. Socialists like Bernie Sanders’ frequently complain that America is one of the only developed countries that doesn’t require leave.
Ultimately, Rotondo was granted the full leave.
While this ruling is undoubtedly a step forward in the fight toward recognizing father’s equal standing in the family realm, we can think of at least one other venue that is badly in need of reform.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2HLUrlN Tyler Durden