Did you know that the Fair Labor Standards Act (our nation’s
primary law for minimum wage and overtime) provides several rights for nursing
mothers at work? These include reasonable “break time” for breastfeeding or
expressing, up to a child’s first birthday (state laws may add more
protection). See here for more.
Compare to this, Commonwealth v. Hamilton Mfg. Co., 120 Mass.
383 (1876).
A state law—common for the time— prohibited the employment of women (and minors)
for more than 60 hours per week in manufacturing. The criminal complaint
against the employer read: “COMPLAINT under the St. of 1874, c. 221, to the
Police Court of Lowell against a cotton and woollen manufacturing company, for
employing an unmarried woman named Mary Shirley, who was over twenty-one years
of age, to work in the defendant’s manufacturing establishment in the
manufacture of cotton goods for sixty-four hours per week.”
The state supreme court upheld the conviction of the employer
(who paid a fine), reasoning:
It is also said that the law violates the right of Mary
Shirley to labor in accordance with her own judgment as to the number of hours
she shall work. The obvious and conclusive reply to this is, that the law does
not limit her right to labor as many hours per day or per week as she may
desire; it does not in terms forbid her laboring in any particular business or
occupation as many hours per day or per week, as she may desire; it merely
prohibits her being employed continuously in the same service more than
a certain number of hours per day or week, which is so clearly within the power
of the Legislature…
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