IBEW Local 363 (New City NY) Members Fired by Phone Company--for being pregnant?!

from the MIDDLETOWN [NEW YORK]TIMES-HERALD-RECORD:

July 19, 2005

Citizens' labor pains: Pregnant workers fired

  By Michael Levensohn
   Times Herald-Record
  mlevensohn@th-record.com
 
  Middletown – On her last day as an employee of Citizens Communications, Colleen Corcoran left in an ambulance.
  It was the morning of Nov. 11, 2004, and Corcoran, then seven months pregnant, shouldn't have been at work at all, according to her doctor. She certainly didn't feel like working, between the constant nausea and the painful sciatica she had developed while carrying what would turn out to be an 11-pound-baby.
  But Corcoran felt she didn't have a choice. Days earlier, Citizens informed her that, if she failed to report to work by Nov. 11, she'd lose her job as a collections consultant, a job she'd held for a decade.
  So she returned to work, armed with a letter from her doctor saying she could work part time, but had to be able to stand for 30 minutes every two hours.
  She presented the letter to a company official, who told her not to bother, because she was no longer considered an employee.
  "I started getting jittery and couldn't breathe," Corcoran said.
  Then the nausea struck.
  She walked to a bathroom, leaned over a toilet and began to vomit.
  While she was bending over, her back gave out.
  Corcoran collapsed on the bathroom floor and remained there until the EMTs arrived and took her to the hospital.
 
  COLLEEN CORCORAN wasn't the only pregnant woman Citizens fired that day.
  Peggy Conklin, another consultant in the 80-person collection center, had spent six years working for Citizens, which also does business locally under the name Frontier.
  Conklin, like Corcoran, was about seven months pregnant when she was fired.
  Conklin, like Corcoran, had presented the company with letters from her doctor explaining why she needed to take some time off.
  "With me being diabetic – I'm high-risk diabetic – the doctor put me out (of work) because I had complications with my first daughter," she said.
  Both women applied through the company for short- and long-term disability benefits, which, under their union contract, would have allowed them time off with partial pay.
  But Citizens overruled the women's doctors, based on the opinion of Dr. Russell Wavrin of EvaluMed. EvaluMed is a company in Minnesota that provides medical opinions by mail or fax.
  "I kept getting denied and denied and denied," Conklin said. "First it was the paperwork that wasn't correct. They didn't think maybe it was in detail enough, so I had to keep resubmitting, and I kept getting denied."
  Wavrin could not be reached by phone, and a Citizens spokeswoman declined to comment for this story.
  Both women were fired after exhausting the time off afforded by the Family Medical Leave Act. Both filed grievances through their union, Local 363 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, then lodged discrimination complaints with the New York State Division of Human Rights.
  "Pregnancy is considered a temporary disability," said Denise Ellison, a spokeswoman for the Division of Human Rights. "It would be against the law to fire or refuse to hire someone because of a pregnancy."
  There's some evidence to suggest that the firings weren't based strictly on pregnancy. Both Conklin and Corcoran had missed time in the past with various ailments.
  Also, another former Citizens collections consultant, Tiffany Abrams, was fired in May 2004 after exhausting her short-term disability time. Abrams suffered from carpal-tunnel syndrome, a work-related injury.
  Her application for long-term disability was denied.
  "If you have any type of situation, they just don't have any compassion for you at all," said Abrams.
  Abrams didn't file any complaints at the time, but said she's reconsidering.
 
  CITIZENS, A PHONE COMPANY with $6.6 billion in assets and 2.4 million customers in 23 states, offered Corcoran $5,000 to drop her complaints. The company gradually raised the number to $15,000. She turned the offers down.
  Conklin applied to Citizens for disability benefits four times before taking matters into her own hands and applying directly to Hartford Life, the company's disability insurer.
  In January – nearly two months after the company fired her rather than grant her request and a month after she gave birth – Hartford Life sent Conklin a letter indicating she'd been approved for both short- and long-term disability benefits. Checks for about $6,000 followed, which helped Conklin pay the bills for several months.
  But that money has run out.
  Two weeks ago, Orange and Rockland Utilities shut off her power. A few days later, she was served an eviction notice. She's been packing up her family's belongings in the dark and moving them to her parents' home, where she and her two children are staying.
  "Thank God I have my parents, because who knows where I would be," said Conklin, who plans to update her resume and begin looking for work after completing the move.
  On Thursday, Corcoran and company officials met in a conciliation conference, a step in the State Division of Human Rights' complaint process.
  "We've reached an agreement," she said by phone Friday. But she declined to elaborate. "I was told I can't talk to you anymore."
 
  On the Web:
  
  www.evalumed.com