Pregnant women were left unemployed due to layoffs in technology companies

Amid widespread layoffs in the tech industry last 12 months, a disturbing trend emerged: Pregnant women and other people on parental leave were amongst those laid off.

There have been many stories on social media detailing the difficult situation of pregnant or postpartum employees who’ve been laid off from work. However, as stated, there are not any explicit legal guarantees protection of pregnant employees or latest parents against dismissal driven by business needs.

Employment lawyer Jack Tuckner, who specializes in gender discrimination cases, said he has received calls from affected employees across the country.

“I think young mothers and pregnant women are certainly vulnerable and are more likely to have abortions,” Tuckner said. “But it’s the same analysis as always: You [can] be fired when you are pregnant, just not because you are pregnant. The bigger problem comes when a thousand or more people are laid off en masse and positions are eliminated – how do you prove that gender, pregnancy and perceived disability mattered?”

In the absence of federally required paid leave, these women must deal with minimal support from their former employers while caring for newborns or preparing for childbirth, with no job security. Or no job.

Nichole Foley, who was fired from Google while on maternity leave, revealed that she was asked to hire a lawyer to reject the terms of her layoff, which Google said was due to performance issues. Former Google worker Brittany Lappano, who was laid off in 2023, founded the Labor Club Discord group, which now has greater than 400 members and offers advice to laid-off employees.

The scale of tech layoffs affecting pregnant employees and latest parents is staggering. Giants like Google, Amazon and Meta have collectively laid off tens of 1000’s of employees over the past 12 months and a half in consequence of widespread downsizing efforts. Tesla recently joined the fray, eliminating over 14,000 positions.

According to the Layoffs.fyi tracker, job cuts in the industry will occur from the start of 2023 has surpassed a devastating 340,000 across companies. According to CNBC, in 2023 Amazon and Microsoft announcing a complete of 28,000 layoffsand Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced layoffs of about 12,000 employees.