by Bob Walsh
Rudy Salas is an Assemblyman from Bakersfield in the formerly great state of California. He is trying to do a good thing. He has introduced a bill that, if passed into law, would REQUIRE that the Dept of Corrections (and rehabilitation) offer light duty jobs to pregnant female correctional officers. (Probably pregnant male correctional officers too, but I digress.)
Speaking as one who has considerable experience in job descriptions, restrictions and scheduling, it isn't as easy as one would assume.
There just are not that many jobs that meet the description.
It used to be that the women would ask for tower duty. That's fine. Trouble is, the trap doors to get into the towers (at least at the older prisons) often require quite a lot of force to open, and they often do not meet the light duty restrictions. Pushing up 45-55 pounds directly over your head while standing on a ladder is not so easy.
Shoving people into the mail room is also a problem. The union that represents the mail room clerks objects. Also, they can not perform any useful custody oriented work there so it means that they are being paid to be a warm body and somebody else is being paid to do their job. It becomes a significant expense if you have enough knocked-up staff.
The women have always had the option of moving to other (non-custody) jobs temporarily, but it means they may loose seniority which effects many aspects of the job, such as ability to promote and seniority bids.
It is an important and worthwhile goal. It will, however, be difficult to actually achieve.
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