A young mother says her rights as an employee were violated after she was wrongly terminated by her employer for going on leave for her pregnancy. Certain workers have employee rightsunder the Family and Medical Leave Act, and the federal law provides up to 12 weeks of unpaid time off for parents with arriving newborns and provides the same amount of time to allow family members to take care of certain loved ones. In addition, the Family and Medical Leave Act protects the jobs of employees while on leave.

A 31-year-old senior program manager with a marketing company claims her former employer asked her to resign instead of allowing her to go on leave for her pregnancy. The company informed the mother-to-be that she was not entitled to leave under the FMLA because she had only worked for the company for four months instead of the requisite one year.

According to one pregnant worker advocate, many pregnant employees who ask for accommodations at work are asked to resign. The 31-year-old mother-to-be left a previous job for a position at the company, and when she informed two human resource executives of her pregnancy they told her she would have to resign because she had not been with the company for 12 months. One of the executives explained that whether she was a sick person or a pregnant woman who had not been with the company for a year she would be treated the same.

A senior advisor from the Center for WorkLife Law commented on the case and said that while the executive’s statement of the company’s leave policy may be true, the company must carry out the policy equally among sick workers and pregnant workers in order for it to be legal.

The young mother has filed a claim with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and her state’s human rights commission.

Source: abcnews.go.com, “Connecticut woman told that maternity leave viewed as resignation,”Susanna Kim, Feb. 3, 2012