| No Images? Click here   The American Academy of Pediatrics promotes breastfeeding as the healthiest start for infants, and doctors encourage mothers to breastfeed for a year or more to maximize those benefits. But the reality is that the U.S. does not guarantee paid leave, and many mothers go back to work within a few weeks of giving birth. For those who want to continue breastfeeding, that means pumping. The Affordable Care Act, now nearly 10 years old, included new legal requirements for employers to accommodate new mothers who want to pump breast milk after returning to work, by providing a space to pump that's shielded from view as well as "reasonable break time." But a HuffPost investigation this week found that the Labor Department has responded to 376 reported violations of that law, and found infractions in 68% of those cases. HuffPost senior reporter Dave Jamieson obtained the complaints via a public records request. Dave has covered labor at HuffPost since 2011, and has won the Livingston Award for Young Journalists, the Hillman Foundation's Sidney Award, and the Deadline Club Award for best business feature. Must Reads talked to Dave about the project and what he found. What led you to investigate this topic? The nursing mothers law is sort of this forgotten little piece of Obamacare that employers are violating all the time. I had done a FOIA on it back in 2014, when the law hadn't been around that long, and got some interesting records back. But I knew if I filed a follow-up request again last year that I would probably get way more paper on it this time. I also knew I'd have to wait forever for it. It was one of those FOIAs that you get together on a slow Friday, send out to the agency, and then like 16 months later a present arrives in the mail. The Labor Department redacted names and identifying characteristics of the women in the files, but you were still able to find some good stories here. What did that take? One cool thing about Labor Department records is that they're filled with narrative. (That's actually their administrative word for it — you request "case narratives.") They have to protect the workers who filed complaints for obvious reasons, but if the investigator on the case isn't completely worthless, then the case file will tell some kind of story. It took a few days to do a first reading of all the cases, flagging the ones that had good nuggets — even before fab enterprise intern Sophie Will and I started building a database of them all. I wanted the story to show how widespread the lawbreaking is. So rather than zeroing in on just a couple of cases, I decided to keep it moving with anecdote after anecdote, using the most upsetting details, and naming all the employers. Rebecca Zisser, who did the art, came up with a way to visually highlight some of the more disturbing stories and statistics. Where do you think the main failure is here — at the employer level or the federal level? From the records it looks like the Labor Department is actually doing its job and investigating these cases quickly and diligently. It comes down to employers big and small ignoring the law. Jerky bosses don't want to give workers breaks, especially in industries like food and retail, and they don't want to have to dedicate a space to pumping. Time is money and a lot of them would rather not deal with this, especially when the penalties are practically nonexistent (there are no damages for violations, you just have to get in line with the law). So, what happened to these women after reporting? Do we know what the resolution was in their workplaces? Usually the employer was quickly shamed into correcting the problem. Even though the nursing mom might not be owed any money, these complaints force employers to open up their books, potentially showing all kinds of wage violations. So it's in their interest to get investigators out of their hair. The sad thing was seeing so many cases where the woman in question simply quit her job because her managers made it impossible to breastfeed. Many women only filed their complaints after they'd left their jobs. You found the number of complaints has been rising. Did your reporting find any reason why that might be the case? I think that's mainly because the law has been around longer and more workers are becoming aware of it. There's also more awareness about breastfeeding rights now than there was just a few years ago. I'd expect the number to continue to rise in the years ahead. So it would probably be worth sending out another FOIA in 2025 if the seas haven't claimed us by then.  🔥 More Must Reads 🔥
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