Breastfeeding Moms Pretty PUMPed For New Workplace Protections

For shame, Dok. For shame.

When my kiddo was borned late in the last century, the little booger breast fed for the first year and a half, and my ex and I were fortunate that we were in graduate school, which gave her the schedule flexibility to pump breast milk at home. That hasn't always been the case for moms who work and needed to express milk for their babbies' later use. A 2010 law, the Break Time for Nursing Mothers Act, was a good start; it gave hourly workers the right to break times and a private place to pump, but it didn't cover salaried workers and had other loopholes that left roughly a quarter of women of childbearing age out of the law's protections, according to the US Breastfeeding Committee. 

So one of our favorite favorite members of Congress, Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-Illinois), joined with fellow Democrats Carolyn Maloney (New York), Lucille Roybal-Allard (California), and Alma Adams (North Carolina), as well as Republican Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (Washington) to fix the prior law and improve its worker protections. Sadly, Herrera Beutler left Congress after losing her 2022 primary to a Trumpy schmuck (but happily the Trumpy schmuck was defeated by Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez when Wonkette least expected it) . But Herrera Beutler was still in Congress when their bill, the Providing Urgent Maternal Protections for Nursing Mothers Act, aka the PUMP Act was included in last year's big Omnibus spending bill, which passed in December.

The improved law closes virtually all the loopholes in the 2010 law and expands the right to pump in a private space (not a closet or restroom, damn it) to "nearly 9 million more workers, including teachers, registered nurses, farmworkers," and others. The law actually went into effect on December 29, but it included a 120-day window for employers to get their shit together, so the effective date was April 28, and there's also a three-year getting ready period for some railroads and bus lines. Airlines were excluded from the law because the industry lobbied against being covered, but the joke is on the lobbyists, since their firms are included.

Also, while the 2010 law was a big help to nursing mothers, it, like nursing babies, initially lacked teeth. There was no enforcement mechanism. So the PUMP Act gives workers the ability to file a complaint with the US Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division , which also has a toll-free number, 1-800-487-9243. As with all WHD complaints, it's illegal for employers to retaliate. The law also provides a framework for workers to sue over violations.

The law requires employers to provide nursing moms a private space that's free of intrusions, for up to a year, with reasonable break time to pump; The 19th notes that "most people need two to three breaks in an eight-hour workday, and pumping can take 15 to 30 minutes a session."

Lactation pod, Simon Skjodt International Orangutan Center, Indianapolis. Photo: Sara Stierch, Creative Commons License 4.0 

The kinds of spaces allowed under the law can be as simple as a space with a curtain or partition; they need to be away from windows or security cameras. Larger employers with more workers may go with a full scale "lactation pod" like the one pictured up top, at Naval Hospital Jacksonville, which the Navy Medicine Flickr page tells us also provides "'Milky Way' rooms for pumping or breastfeeding" at two locations in the hospital, Labor and Delivery, and the pediatric clinic. Egads, the military is going woke, and how can we beat China in a land war if we let nursing mothers at stateside hospitals conveniently feed their babbies? (Trick question: Both sides would be wiped out in a nuclear war.)

In conclusion, about goddamn time, the end.

[ Lauren Underwood on Twitter / Scripps News / US Breastfeeding Committee / The 19th / Photos:  US Navy Medicine (public domain); Sara Stierch, Creative Commons License 4.0 ]

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