Frontier employees turn to dirty closets, bathroom floors to pump breast milk
Two women file sexual discrimination complaints
Frontier flight attendant Jo Roby spent the first few months of her daughter’s life pumping breast milk on the floor in airport bathrooms and squeezing into airplane lavatories.
She needed to pump every three or four hours to avoid health complications, but working for Frontier made that difficult: The low-cost airline forbids employees from pumping breast milk during flights.
When she couldn’t pump, Roby said, she continued to work despite risking infection and enduring physical pain from engorgement.
Roby asked her employer for “on-the-job accommodations,” but Frontier offered unpaid medical leave instead, according to a sexual discrimination complaint filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in mid-May.
Roby is one of two flight attendants who have recently filed complaints alleging that “Frontier is systematically failing to accommodate the needs of its pregnant and breast-feeding flight attendants.” The other complaint was filed by a flight attendant named Stacy Schiller.
The complaints state that Frontier does not offer its employees maternity leave and instead requires parents to use accrued sick or vacation days.
“They’re both on unpaid medical leave so that they can breast-feed,” said Galen Sherwin, senior staff attorney with the ACLU Women’s Rights Project. “They are home because they’re unready to give up breast-feeding, which they would have had to do to return to work because of Frontier’s failure to provide necessary accommodations to allow them to express breast milk on the job.”
The airline did not respond to multiple requests seeking comment about the complaints, but it did release a statement to NBC News saying that the company’s policies comply with state and federal law.
“Our policies and practices comply with all federal and state laws as well as with the relevant provisions of the collective bargaining agreement between Frontier and its flight attendant group,” the statement said, according to NBC News. “We have made good-faith efforts to identity and provide rooms and other secure locations for use by breast-feeding flight attendants during their duty travel.”
A year ago, a veteran Frontier pilot named Randi Freyer filed a complaint with the EEOC making similar discrimination claims. She was joined by three other female pilots working for Frontier, all of whom alleged that the airline made it “extremely difficult” for them to continue breast-feeding once they returned to work from maternity leave.
After Freyer filed the complaint, Frontier provided her with a list of about 25 locations where she’s allowed to pump. Since she’s still not allowed to pump on airplanes while they’re flying, very few have made her life easier.
Freyer still pumps in cramped, dirty maintenance closets, random offices that offer little privacy and germ-infested restrooms.
Despite sometimes feeling embarrassed, Freyer said it’s worth the struggle.
“I feel proud that I am able to nurse for my kid and I will bend over backward to do this,” she said. “There are hoops and challenges, but this is for my child’s health and I’ll endure whatever it takes.”
Original story by The Washington Post’s Peter Holley.
