Providing Urgent Maternal Protections for Nursing Mothers Act

Floor Speech

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Mrs. MILLER-MEEKS. Madam Speaker, I thank Dr. Foxx for yielding me time to speak on this important issue.

As a mother and a physician, I understand the tremendous value that nursing an infant brings both to the mother and the child.

As the director of the Iowa Department of Public Health, I attended conferences and spoke on the need to encourage mothers to consider breastfeeding and the benefits of breastfeeding, be they nutritional, immunological, or the tremendous bond that occurs through breastfeeding.

It is also why, despite being a working mother who was doing a general surgery internship and ophthalmology residency, I breast-fed both of my children. Because I was a working mother, that included expressing breast milk by pumping.

I understand and I am supportive of the collaboration between employers and nursing mothers to have a private place to do so at their place of employment. I recognize that H.R. 3110 is trying to address this issue and provide accommodations for nursing mothers, which I wholeheartedly support, however, I feel the bill needs improvement.

As it stands, H.R. 3110 puts a one-size-fits-all treatment of nursing accommodations for different businesses and industries. The bill also puts excessive penalties for minor or technical violations of the nursing-accommodation requirements in the Fair Labor Standards Act.

These unreasonable penalties, combined with compliance challenges posed by the mandate, will lead to costly and protracted lawsuits because of their adversarial nature.

The result will be delayed accommodations for working mothers. Rather than a collaborative arrangement between an employer and a nursing mother employee, this bill is punitive in nature.

To address laws and H.R. 3110 and build on current law protections for nursing mothers, I submitted my bill, H.R. 4297, the Supporting Working Mothers Act, to the Rules Committee as an amendment.

My bill is based on legislation introduced in a previous Congress by the sponsor of the bill we are debating today. Unfortunately, the majority refused to allow my amendment to even be debated on the floor.

My amendment represents a workable, feasible, and reasonable approach to the Fair Labor Standards Act nursing-accommodation requirements.

First, my amendment would have modified current law by providing coverage to white collar executive, administrative, and professional employees, while also maintaining current law coverage of hourly employees. My bill also preserved the 50-employee undue hardship exemption threshold as a safeguard for small businesses.

These provisions would ensure coverage for over 80 percent of the women who are not currently covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act nursing-accommodation requirement.

The bill we are debating today, H.R. 3110, significantly increases the penalties for employer violations that are required for breastfeeding accommodations, regardless of attempts at compliance.

These penalties are disproportionate to the technical and unintentional Fair Labor Standards Act violations which could occur under this bill.

My amendment would have preserved the authority of the Secretary of Labor to provide injunctive relief to address shortcomings and accommodations and assessable monetary penalties for repeat violations.

However--and this is critical--my amendment also includes a provision establishing a collaborative process for employees and employers to create and improve accommodations in a timely fashion without relying on time consuming and expensive lawsuits.

Because workplaces are not one size fits all, it is critical that legislation on nursing accommodations provide clear requirements that are adaptable to many kinds of workplaces, so that employers understand their obligations and are able to comply.

Again, given my strong support of breastfeeding, pumping, and storing of breast milk, I am very disappointed that my amendment was not ruled in order by the majority and that Congress did not take this opportunity to address the flaws in H.R. 3110.

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