Tara Germain carries a gun. She wears a bulletproof vest. As a police officer in the Suffolk County Parks Department, Germain, of St. James, responds to emergency situations, domestic disputes and criminal activities. Her duty requires her to be ready for anything, the ability to react on a moment’s notice to the most unpredictable of scenarios. This is what the Suffolk County Police Academy trained her for. This is what she enjoys.
No training, however, could prepare the 37-year-old for what she encountered on April 21, 2007, she tells the Press. That’s the day Germain informed her superiors she was pregnant and presented a doctor’s note explaining she was no longer able to perform her full duty due to the pregnancy. In addition, Germain included a letter advising of a previous court ruling in Suffolk that mandated pregnant women in the Suffolk County Police Department (SCPD) be provided limited duty assignments. Germain’s request was denied. She was also told that she would not be promoted, despite holding the No. 1 ranking on her Civil Service eligibility test for sergeant.
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Instead of relishing in the joy of becoming a mother, Germain became consumed by the dismal plight she now found herself in. She would spend 184 days on unpaid leave. Germaine’s husband, also a Suffolk County police officer, offered to transfer some of his sick leave to his wife. That request was denied, too.
“It just sucked the joy right out of me,” says Germain. “I had a very hard time being happy about the pregnancy… I feel like I took something away from my daughter. I didn’t get to experience what every mother gets to experience when they’re pregnant, just the excitement of being pregnant and not worrying about your job, not worrying about your financial situation.”
Germain, who gave birth to her now-16-month-old daughter Aubrey Alana last year, is suing the county to the tune of $60,000 to $100,000, alleging pregnancy and gender discrimination. Her case will be heard at federal court in Central Islip on April 27.
Suffolk County Attorney Christine Malafi strongly refutes the allegations.
“I will tell you that the county is very, very strict in its zero tolerance for any type of discrimination,” says Malafi. “None of the allegations as to discrimination are true.”
But Germain is not alone. Pregnancy discrimination suits are on the rise nationally. According to statistics from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, claims of pregnancy discrimination have climbed 48 percent in the last 10 years, from 4,219 in 1998 to 6,258 in 2008. Experts are unsure if the spike is due to the gradual raising of the so-called glass ceiling, which has resulted in more women gaining positions in traditionally male-dominated jobs, or an increase in the number of discriminatory polices.
Either way, since pregnancies are unique to women, the law states that employers must adapt policies for pregnant women in the workforce, says co-counsel on Germain’s case, Gillian Thomas, senior staff attorney at Legal Momentum, formerly the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund.
“The bottom line is that Tara, or anyone else who has this policy applied to them, either stays on the job risking their life and their unborn fetus’ life or they get kicked off the job and have to use up all their sick leave and all their vacation so that if they ever do ever really get sick and need time off they don’t have it and are without a paycheck,” she says. “No man will ever face that.”
Malafi contends that the rules that apply to the SCPD’s pregnancy policy do not apply to the parks department police force. If Germain was allowed lighter duty due to her pregnancy, it would be discriminatory against men in that department, she says, since they do not receive lighter duty due to off-the-job injuries or conditions. She explains that there are many other factors in promotion decisions and that the written examination is just one. In addition, the only type of shared sick leave within the county is a “cancer pool,” in which employees can donate time for coworkers with life-threatening diseases or treatment.
“With civil service in the county, we can’t do one thing for one person unless you do it for everyone,” says Malafi.
But pregnancy discrimination is just one struggle women in the workforce are finding themselves confronted with. Another is pay equity.
Women are still being paid substantially less than men. According to Marcia Pappas, president of the National Organization of Women’s (NOW) New York State chapter, nationally, women earn about 78 cents on the male dollar, up from about 70 cents four years ago.
In Nassau, a multi-million-dollar class action lawsuit filed in federal court on behalf of several of the county’s Police Communication Operators (PCOs), who are 90 percent women, seeking pay equal to that of their male counterparts in the fire department, has recently received the green light from a judge to go to trial. According to the police operators’ complaint, which the Press first reported on in 2005, individual PCOs have been paid between $1,500 and $10,000 less annually than workers of equal seniority in Firecom, the county’s all-male fire dispatch unit, since 1999, despite performing substantially equal work.
Nassau County Attorney Lorna Goodman disagrees, contending that the PCOs and the Firecom unit do different work.
Earlier this month, a judge denied a motion by the county to have the suit dismissed. It will proceed before a jury sometime before the end of the year, says Nassau’s Goodman.
“We believe that these two groups do different work, therefore we do not believe we have violated the Equal Pay Act,” she says.
The plaintiffs’ co-counsels Herb Eisenberg, of Manhattan-based Eisenberg & Schnell, and attorney Janice Goodman, also of Manhattan (and co-counsel on Germain’s case), believe a jury will see otherwise.
“We’re optimistic that after we have an opportunity to demonstrate the similarities between the jobs the male fire phone-answerers are doing and the female 911 answerers are doing that it will be clear that they should all be paid the same and should have been throughout,” says Eisenberg.
