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    Hell on HeelsAnna Merlan
    6/09/15 12:57pm

    The info you have on maternity leave entitlements in CA is actually still not entirely complete. CFRA does entitle moms (and dads!) to 12 weeks within a 12-month period after the birth, but that is in addition to state-mandated short-term disability insurance coverage starting at week 36 of a normal pregnancy, and continuing six weeks after a vaginal delivery and eight weeks after a c-section. So someone who delivers vaginally on her due date would actually be entitled to 22 weeks of maternity leave. I am on maternity leave now and had my baby last Wednesday, two weeks late, so I will be covered for closer to 24 weeks since time between due date and actual delivery doesn’t count against you.

    Additionally, though employers are not required to pay their employees, both the SDI and six weeks of of CFRA (via a program called CA Paid Family Leave) are paid by the state at 50-60% of your salary over the past 12 months (though the max payout is pretty low by CA standards so higher earners wind up with less...many employers do offer supplementary SDI to top up coverage to 60%).

    In summary: move to CA! It’s expensive as hell and we don’t have any water but it’s about the only good place in the U.S. to have a baby!

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      Anna MerlanHell on Heels
      6/09/15 1:15pm

      Thank you very much for this.

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      Hell on HeelsAnna Merlan
      6/09/15 1:31pm

      No problem! It’s a pretty complicated system to parse.

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    WhoamIwhatamIwhyamIAnna Merlan
    6/09/15 10:25am

    That’s a lot of pregnant employees at one company!!

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      bishheartWhoamIwhatamIwhyamI
      6/09/15 10:29am

      Not really. Any company that hires mostly women between the ages of 23 and 35 can expect to have to juggle lots of pregnancies. Retailers tend to hire more women than men, as do marketing driven companies.

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      FKAKatesWhoamIwhatamIwhyamI
      6/09/15 10:32am

      Not exactly. A Google search shows that, at its peak, Nasty Gal had 350 employees. So 3 preggos and 1 guy with a preggo wife seems normal.

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    fennelbreathAnna Merlan
    6/09/15 10:22am

    One of the GlassDoor comments says that more than 30 people were laid off in a year. Assuming that’s true, how much of a case do these plaintiffs really have? You can’t expect a company going through significant layoffs to spare all the pregnant employees... right?

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      sirstinksalotfennelbreath
      6/09/15 10:40am

      Yes but if those 4 pregnant people were part of those 30 people that would be mean that 13% of those laid off were pregnant. Was 13% of the company pregnant at the time of layoffs? Probably not.

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      melliemfennelbreath
      6/09/15 10:40am

      The one that seems pretty clear though is the woman who was replaced by two men. Also, if a high percentage of pregnant employees were fired they can establish a pattern and practice.

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    000Anna Merlan
    6/09/15 10:23am

    “ The suit, filed by ex-employee Aimee Concepcion, says Nasty Gal terminated her and three other women, as well as one man about to take paternity leave. “

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      SterilizeAllRepublicans000
      6/09/15 10:52am

      The silver lining here is that the one guy wanting to take paternity leave to care for his family may get the MRA crowd to help take this company to task!

      ...oh wait, men who are actual fathers and care about their offspring are as contemptible as women. I forget that. It’s only if they don’t want to be forced to pay child support that MRAs will care.

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      CaveySterilizeAllRepublicans
      6/09/15 11:48am

      I quit my job because my boss was expecting me to come to work during the vacation days I took when my daughter was born. As a man and a stay at home father for 6 years now, if I find myself on the same side of an argument as an MRA, I will immediately reassess my position to make sure I’m not crazy.

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    olivianewtonjohnAnna Merlan
    6/09/15 11:04am

    Sadly, what happened to Concepcion isn’t specific to Nasty Gal—it doesn’t sound like they were in the wrong here (legally, anyway—morally? that’s another story.). I have a friend who also became pregnant while new in her job—she did not qualify for maternity leave, so she had to take unpaid disability leave. Also, as another commentor mentioned, the fact that this happend in the midst of multiple rounds of layoffs does not bode well for Concepcion.

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      Dances With Hamstersolivianewtonjohn
      6/09/15 11:47am

      Sadly, the message from the US government is that they don’t value pregnant employees, so it’s hardly surprising that individual companies don’t either. I just had to look up other countries whose governments don’t offer paid maternity leave. There are 4 in the world; the US, Lesotho, Papua New Guinea and Swaziland! 4 in the world! This may be common knowledge in the US but I was shocked

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      olivianewtonjohnDances With Hamsters
      6/09/15 11:51am

      Yes, it’s common knowledge here that maternity leave policies suck. John Oliver recently did a great piece on this very topic.

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    kitteneyeAnna Merlan
    6/09/15 10:29am

    This isn’t surprising. Nasty Gal is known in the industry for being a terrible place to work - incredibly cliquish and with leadership that has no idea what the fuck it is doing. It’s particularly unfortunate that its founder has branded herself as a model for female leaders.

    Hopefully this changes with the new CEO.

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      antoinettemariekitteneye
      6/09/15 11:01am

      ModCloth is also like that. :/ Suuuper clique-y and apparently, the warehouse is awful to work in. Seems more put together than NastyGal from Glassdoor, but from meeting people in Pittsburgh who worked there, it seems like a shithole with better branding. Also, I know they asked employees to rate the company on company review sites. Or rather “strongly suggest you talk up your positive experiences here” line.

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    xuwotmatexAnna Merlan
    6/09/15 1:24pm

    I think a big part of this is that women end up being more involved with their kids than men do, so when they have kids, they spend less time building their career. What if we started marrying men who supported US and dealt with the kids just as much as we do for them?

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      TeenaBurnerxuwotmatex
      6/09/15 3:46pm

      It’s not like those kinds of guys are particularly common, especially at the level of educational attainment that career women usually prefer in a mate.

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      limitedimaginationTeenaBurner
      6/09/15 4:34pm

      Highly educated men are less likely to support parental equality /family leave? Or career women want uneducated partners?

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    saltyladysotherburnerAnna Merlan
    6/09/15 11:03am

    CA Pregnancy Disability Leave is not “four months guaranteed leave,” not for everyone. It’s only while you are “actually disabled on account of pregnancy, childbirth, and related conditions.” So for a standard pregnancy, 6-8 weeks of unpaid leave is almost accurate— it just doesn’t include any time she was disabled immediately before her due date. Not saying it’s great, but it is legal to limit the leave to that. It’s not just four months, and it stops as soon as you’re recovered from your delivery— it’s not “maternity leave” as in being home with the baby. That’s CFRA.

    I would recommend to most CA employees to wait until you’ve been someplace a year to take leave, because then you get your CA PDL on top of CFRA, which can total up to seven months if you have some condition that disables you earlier in your pregnancy, and as soon as you’re no longer disabled, you can take your 12 weeks of CFRA. During that time, you can use CA’s paid family leave benefits.

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      fireburningonthedancefloorAnna Merlan
      6/09/15 10:26am

      If these allegations are true, the irony is pretty rich.

      I guess I don’t see it as ironic because what pregnant “girl,” or should I say “gal,” would even be able to wear any of that trashy crap after the first trimester? Pregnancy is off-brand.

      Sophia Amoruso is like the female Dov Charney in how she ran her shitshow company. At least Dov never wrote a stupid advice book, and now this woman has forced me into saying something good about Dov Charney.

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        DayWalkingGingerfireburningonthedancefloor
        6/09/15 10:49am

        There there...

        GIF
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      58438543Anna Merlan
      6/09/15 3:53pm

      Nasty Gal’s statement says “lawsuits” - does this mean there is more than one?

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