NEW YORK — Victoria Cornejo Barrera thought the legal helpline for workers sounded too good to be true and wondered if it was a scam. A month earlier, Cornejo Barrera had been forced to take leave from her job as head custodian at a South Carolina high school after she turned in a doctor's note asking to be exempt from tasks like climbing ladders and lifting more than 20 pounds because she was pregnant. She spent a month crying and blaming herself for thinking she could keep her job while pregnant.
She used up all her accumulated paid time off because she couldn't afford to go without a paycheck. Then she got a notice from human resources saying she would have to start paying $600 a month to stay on health insurance while on unpaid leave. “I was feeling so guilty.
I was feeling like my pregnancy was the problem,” Cornejo Barrera said. Searching for help online, she came across the website run by the legal advocacy organization A Better Balance, explaining about a federal law called the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act that entitled her to the types of accommodations she had been seeking. It had gone into effect in June 2023, a month before she was pushed out of her job.
Was the law really on her side? Cornejo Barrera called the helpline. Nearly 500 workers in similar circumstances have contacted A Better Balance's legal helpline in the year since the implementation of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which strengthens the rights of workers to seek accommodations for preg.